Gingrich Warns that GOP Needs 10 Smoking Guns for Impeachment
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri, and welcome back to Somebody's Gotta Win. It's been one week since Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and whether, as vice president, he benefited from his son Hunter Biden's business dealings. So I figured it'd be a good time to speak to the last Republican speaker to impeach a president, Newt Gingrich. It was more than 20 years ago,

But Gingrich is still an elder statesman in the GOP and a spiritual godfather of the House Freedom Caucus. You know, that faction of the party that's led by Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene that basically strong-armed the current speaker, Kevin McCarthy, into this impeachment inquiry? They're also pushing for a government shutdown at the same time. Love him or hate him, Gingrich knows a lot about impeachment and remains an advisor to McCarthy and Donald Trump.

Some would say his voyage into impeachment didn't exactly pan out for him or the party since Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections after they voted to impeach Bill Clinton. For what it's worth, he doesn't see it that way. Interestingly, he thinks that Kevin McCarthy has to come out of this inquiry with more than just one smoking gun to convince the American people to impeach. He said he needs to come out with more like six.

And he's not even sure the House needs to vote on impeachment if they can't get the kind of goods that change hearts and minds. But will it all backfire on Republicans in 2024 if they can't prove that Biden directly benefited from his son's business dealings? If they don't vote to impeach, will Democrats say Biden was exonerated and was all a big fishing expedition, a huge waste of taxpayer time and money? Or is this just what the Republican Party wants and needs right now?

as they aim to bloody Biden ahead of the 2024 election and give him some legal problems like Donald Trump. Speaker Gingrich, thank you for joining me today. Before Kevin McCarthy even announced an inquiry, you seemed to be signaling that this is not something to go into lightly. You told Politico that he needed to, quote, go slow and be careful and keep unveiling more and more examples of corruption and that you believe you never really got a serious Senate trial because you failed to totally convince the American people.

As it stands right now, based on the information that Kevin McCarthy has unveiled, do you think there's enough right now to make the argument for impeachment? Well, I think there's enough to make the argument, but I don't think it's convinced the American people yet.

I thought that Speaker McCarthy did exactly the right thing because he didn't start moving towards impeachment. He asked for an impeachment inquiry. And certainly, if you look at the three or four fake names that Biden was using as vice president to do over 5,400 emails, if you look at the facts which the House

Oversight Committee released last week of 22 different examples where Biden clearly was lying. If you look at everything we already know, there's more than enough reason to have an inquiry.

I think the inquiry will either show so much corruption that the American people will conclude that it's intolerable or it will not show that, in which case the American people would refuse to support an impeachment. So I think that it's important.

Lincoln once said, with public sentiment, anything is possible. Without public sentiment, nothing is possible. And I think that's where we are right now. The public is not yet convinced. And, of course, the left-wing media, starting with The New York Times and Washington Post, are doing everything they can to avoid reporting all this stuff. So it's a little bit of an uphill fight, first, to learn the truth,

And second, to get it out to the American people, despite the extraordinary interference of the left wing media. But I do think over the next few months that'll happen. Did you end up holding a vote for an impeachment inquiry or did you go straight into an impeachment vote? Well, we were in a different situation because we had with we had an outside party.

uh, investigator who issued a report, uh, which basically the star report. Yeah. Yeah. Which was basically the, no, this was, this was on, um, the whiskey and all that stuff. And, um, it was actually, um, in a sense, the equivalent of an inquiry. Um, I mean, I always thought that we had mishandled the Clinton investigation because, um,

From my perspective, the real problem for Clinton was that he had lied under oath and that perjury is a felony. And as a Yale-educated lawyer, he knew that. But he did it because if he had told the truth under oath, it would have been clear that he had pressured this young woman, Paula Jones, in ways that she had described, which would have been unacceptable.

So Clinton actually lied to the American people very openly in April of 1998, said it did not happen, that he had not had sex with Lewinsky. And later I talked to one of his lawyers many years later who said he had asked Clinton, he said, why did you do that? And Clinton said, because if I told the truth, I'd have been out of office in April. And so I lied because that bought the time for us to sort of stabilize the situation.

When you moved away from the law and you moved towards sex, the public was more willing to be forgiving than they would have been, I think, if the issue had been, can the President of the United States, particularly in a sexual harassment case where the woman is being lied about, can he really get away with committing perjury? So I think we failed to lay the groundwork, and the result was

And there's a book by one of the House committee members that says very bitter about this. When it got to the Senate, senators did not feel the public pressure. The senators basically refused to have a serious trial, wanted to get it off their plate and out of the way, and did everything they could to maneuver just to get it over with.

That would probably happen this time around, though, as well, because I don't sense a lot of enthusiasm about it. Also, Chuck Schumer is the... Look, there won't be unless they develop such clear and overwhelming evidence that the American people... If the American people get enthusiastic enough, the Senate will get enthusiastic. But the pressure has to come from the American people.

But does McCarthy need a smoking gun? Like, I'm sure you thought that perjury was a smoking gun, right? Was that what you were thinking when you brought it over to the Senate? Look, I think the Clinton people did a brilliant job of switching the topic.

and making sure there was actually about Lewinsky and sex rather than about perjury in the Paula Jones case. And I think, frankly, that the report made that easier. But having said all that, I think that what McCarthy has to have, smoking gun may be one term, he needs to have about 10 smoking guns.

Because the New York Times and the Washington Post and the professional Democrats will simply reject one or two or three. But there is a place. Remember, it takes about a year and a half for Nixon to have to leave office. And by the time he has to leave office, 46 officials are convicted during Watergate, including the attorney general.

The only the only cabinet officer ever convicted in American history. And so I think you have to wait and see a little bit about how this all plays out, because it's really it's actually, I think, interesting.

Two very different stories. One story is the corruption of the Biden family, which begins with the unraveling of the laptop, Hunter Biden's laptop. The second story is the level of dishonesty and corruption in the Justice Department.

and the intelligence community. And the two stories are parallel, but they're very separate. But they're also very like large, grand conspiracy-esque, probably hard to prove. And then I know you were mentioning the Washington Post and the New York Times, but you have Ken Buck, who is a, you know,

was, is a house freedom caucus member, more, one of the more hardline conservatives in the Washington post saying that this impeachment inquiry is disgraceful and he's trying to shoot down all of, you know, president, but that he shoots down the arguments that Kevin McCarthy makes that president Biden is somehow connected to his son's business dealing. He basically says that

We haven't been able to prove that yet. And in some cases, he actually tries to shoot it down. And I know that there are these email aliases and some, you know. To be honest, I'm very confused by Ken Buck's article. Why? I mean, I don't get it because I've looked at all the data.

I mean, if the question is, was Joe Biden actively helping his son in foreign business dealings involving Kazakhstan, Russia, Romania, Ukraine and China? No reasonable person could suggest that he wasn't. And so I don't I don't understand what Ken Buck's point is. I mean, what kind of evidence does he need?

Does Biden have to issue a confession that he signs? I think that they want to see an actual, you know, like monetary transaction. They want to see money moving from Hunter Biden to Joe Biden. That's the purpose of the inquiry. If the inquiry subpoenas all the bank records and the inquiry subpoenas all the credit card records, and it turns out that, remember, it's Hunter Biden who writes in a letter to his daughter

I have had to pay half of my income to pop. Now, what do we think that meant? I have a hunch it meant he had to give half the money to Joe Biden.

Now, I find it fascinating. I don't understand Ken Buck's reasoning because I find it fascinating that Ken Buck doesn't want to know what did paying half of all my income to pop mean? I don't think there's any doubt that people think that, you know, Hunter Biden was up to some shady business dealings. I don't think that they've been able to prove yet that Joe Biden either, you know, directly was involved in it or benefited from it. And that's...

No. As I said, that's why you have to have an inquiry. I mean, on the one hand, the White House and the Democrats do everything they can to hide the evidence. Then they say, see, you don't have any evidence. Well, I'll come back and just raise the question with you again, because you're a reasonably rational person. What do we think Hunter Biden meant when he said he was paying half of his income to his father?

Honestly, I need the full context of that email. I don't have the full context of the email, but I understand what you're saying. It's a letter to his daughter. And when she says to his daughter, I will never require you to pay me half of your income the way my father requires me to pay him half of my income. That's a virtually direct quote.

And by the way, it's been in books. Nobody disputes that the quote exists. But let's go a step further. Joe Biden says, oh, I never got involved in my son's business. So he shows up at Cafe Milano, one of my favorite restaurants, and he's in a meeting with like eight different rich people from different countries, none of them friends in the United States. Now, you know, so Hunter can say, here's my father, who's the incumbent vice president at the time.

Now you can say to me, well, he was just trying to drop by for his son to be helpful. No, I don't think there's any doubt that he was able to make money off his access to his father. You know, it's just that they have to go further and prove it. But I do want to go, I do want to ask you. You just said what I said. They have to go further and prove it. Yeah, they haven't proved it. But so far there have been months of investigations. Why would Buck want to close it down?

We're not saying right now impeach Joe Biden. We're saying find out the truth. But here's the other question. Why not call a vote on the inquiry? You know, Kevin McCarthy did not call a vote on the impeachment inquiry. And why do you think that was? Because Nancy Pelosi gave him the excuse. She eventually did, though. She eventually called a vote on the inquiry. She did exactly the same thing. To get more time to be able to dig up more information. Right. She did exactly the same thing.

OK, so do you think he will eventually need to call a vote on the impeachment inquiry? I think he would probably have to call a vote on moving forward from the inquiry. But again, if I were him, I'd be patient. Let's see how much more information comes out. Do you think that he needs to you know, are there are there any landmines that he should be aware of? I think the biggest landmine is don't go too fast.

Get the facts, but the facts speak for themselves. Don't overpromise anything. And let's see what we learn.

But what if they aren't able to get the facts? What if they aren't able to build a case that they think that they'll be able to build? The purpose of inquiry is to be able to subpoena all of the documents and bring people in to testify. Bill Clinton was a very popular president. His approval rating actually went up after impeachment to 73%. And the Republicans were the ones who lost seats in the House. Well, Clinton had the great advantage of a huge economic boom, which we helped create.

We had the only four balanced budgets in your lifetime came from the Republican House. We had passed welfare reform, which was extraordinarily popular. And remember, he gets reelected before the scandal. In fact, there's a book out called The Pact, which is by a professor at Duke, which outlines how much Clinton and I were working together and we were preparing a very large reform plan for 1998. And it all blew up when the Lewinsky story blew up.

So there is actually a threat that, you know, I know that Biden and McCarthy don't exactly have the best relationship, but they were obviously able to reach a debt agreement.

resolution over the summer. Now that we're impeachment inquiry land, I mean, how was he able to do any work with Kevin McCarthy for the rest of the... I worked with Bill Clinton all through the impeachment. What advice would you give to Kevin McCarthy about how to work with Joe Biden? Well, I'm not going to comment on what advice I give the speaker, but I would say to you that I think it is totally appropriate

to be able to work on the problems of the American people while discovering the truth about the president of the United States. And Clinton and I, for example, worked, we literally talked about Saddam Hussein the day of the impeachment vote. We were able to compartmentalize

But those days feel like they've long been past. They're long past those days. I mean, you know, Donald Trump, because of the presidency of Donald Trump, the polarization of our country right now, Republicans and Democrats are just not really working together in the same way. And even though it's a, it reflects the polarity of the people too, really. Oh,

To some extent. I run a project called America's New Majority Project, which you can see at the website by that name. And we have since 2018, we've been doing a national poll every two weeks. We've been doing focus groups. I can show you a dozen issues where 70, 80 or even 90 percent of American people are in agreement.

For example, 84 percent of the American people believe in parents' rights and knowing what happens in the classroom. Eighty four percent. Now, that's a pretty big majority. So so so I don't buy I think this is a Washington fixation. I don't I don't think I think the country is relatively united against Washington.

Right. So does this say, say Kevin McCarthy can't get the goods or he doesn't have enough to have a real impeachment vote? Does he have to end it in a vote? Can he just say, you know what, we're not going to vote on this? Well, if they don't come up,

with, as I said earlier, a half dozen or more smoking guns, not one, a half dozen or more, they can't move forward. That's not complicated. Either the American people decide that the one Biden is corrupt and two, the Department of Justice is corrupt, or they decide they're not. Now, the polling data is increasingly bad for Biden, and it's increasingly bad for the Justice Department.

Yeah, that's fair. The polling data does show. I think there was a CNN poll that 61 percent of Americans believe that Joe Biden was involved in his in his son's business dealings. I don't think there's any question about that. But, you know, is it enough to call it an impeachment vote? So if he doesn't call an impeachment vote, then you and I are walking in a circle.

I agree with you. It's not currently enough to call an impeachment vote. The question is, if you get two or three more months of information, if you learn what's in the 5,400 emails that came from fake names, if you learn from, I mean, I've already been talking to people who have additional witnesses who are prepared to testify that Joe Biden was directly involved. I've also asked the question, who paid for Hunter Biden's trips on Air Force Two?

Yeah. But here's the question. If it doesn't end in a vote, obviously that's going to be a huge win for the Democrats. So how do you deal with that? And I think that's kind of where I think perhaps, you know, this is a risky, this is a risky maneuver right now. Like, couldn't they have just continued investigating in their house committees? Did they have to really call an impeachment inquiry? Could they have come up with these six? They believe that they need the additional authority to

that an inquiry, an impeachment inquiry gives them to interview a wider range of people and to subpoena a wider range of documents. So that's tax records that you couldn't get that in a House committee. You couldn't get tax records. You couldn't get subpoenas. You couldn't. I thought that you could subpoena people through the House inquiry. Can you just explain to me? This gives you a broader range of people you can subpoena. I mean, I'm not an expert on this phase of it.

but I was told by the committees and by McCarthy staff that the purpose was to broaden their capacity to force the information out in the open. So, I mean, the long running theory is that not the long running, but the, I guess you could say the theory in Washington is that this impeachment inquiry was something that Kevin McCarthy felt like he had to do. It was something that he, you know, it was sort of a gift to the right flank that was hungry for it. Um,

and that this was the only way he was going to be able to get around a government shutdown, that by giving them an impeachment inquiry, you know, he could pass a continuing resolution or some sort of short-term budget resolution. Do you believe that that was a smart choice? Like, do you think that that was the right way to go about getting through this spending pickle that he's in? Look, I think the two are parallel and not directly connected.

How is that? I just said, I think that they're not directly connected. I think that it's more accurate to say that there's a natural organic development here. They have enough information. They felt comfortable saying it was time to move towards an impeachment inquiry, but not an impeachment itself. And I think that that's a prudent next step. What's your prediction in terms of government shutdown? Do you think we're going to end up seeing a government shutdown? Probably.

I think it's too complicated a dance right now. And I think the gap between the different factions is large enough. I think until they get exhausted, it may be hard to pass anything. Do you think it'll be like a weekend government shutdown? Or do you think this is going to be a week-long thing, two weeks? When I was Speaker, we shut the government twice, once for 27 days. And people all said, oh, my God, this is going to hurt the Republicans. We were the first...

Republican majority in 40 years. We were the first reelected Republican majority since 1928. But you did lose a lot of seats, though, after the reelection. No, no, not true. We gained seats in 1996. We lost seats in 98. The government shutdowns were in 95. They did not hurt us at all because people said, oh, they're serious about cutting spending. Okay, well,

You think that that will show that you think it will show the American people that they're serious, that Republicans are serious about cutting spending. They won't blame them for it. And I think it depends on how the next two or three weeks operate. You've got a bunch of Senate Republicans who would spend as much money as they can get away with. You have the Democrats who will spend as much money as they can get away with. You have the House Republicans split between a handful who would cut a deal and the rest of them who really want to cut spending.

And I think the American people in our polling data at America's New Majority Project, we show overwhelming support for cutting spending. People are worried about the deficits. They think that big spending is directly tied to inflation and they think that cutting spending would help with inflation. You know, and you're now going to pay almost a trillion dollars a year interest on the debt.

Well, that's an astonishing number. And I think as a result, people are ready for us to try to reform it. So we'll see. So you would actually go for the shutdown, just go for it? No, I wouldn't go for it. I would try to find a way to cut spending and have policy changes without a shutdown if possible. But I would not sell out, give up everything I believe

in order to avoid a shutdown. Well, we'll have to see how that plays out over the next few weeks and into the election year. Thanks for joining me, Speaker Gingrich. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've been allowed of, or dialing up a sweat session indoors.

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This episode is brought to you by Thomas's. Thomas's presents Technique with Tom. Slicing an English muffin with a butter blade? Boulder dash! Just pull apart with your hands and marvel in the nooks and crannies' splendor. For each one is unique, like a snowflake. Thomas's. Huzzah! A toast to breakfast. I want to bring in my colleague, Abby Livingston, who covers Congress for Puck.

just to kind of get another perspective on whether there is real downside for Republicans in pursuing impeachment. Abby, thanks so much for joining me. It was interesting hearing Speaker Gingrich's perspective, but why should we care about what Newt Gingrich thinks about impeachment? I think we should care about Newt Gingrich because he, for one, his kind of heart and spirit

Tends to be with, I think, the Freedom Caucus, just in how he's conducted his career, but also...

He is considered the beginning of when politics got so polarized. And he has tried to impeach a Democratic president and he has shut down the government and neither went very well for him. So I think he is sort of an interesting juxtaposition of probably the heart and the head of the Republican Party right now. He said in 1995, they shut down the government and it didn't affect them at all in 1996. Yeah.

I mean, he can say that, but many people think that's what helped Bill Clinton win reelection in 96. And so, you know, I think historically, most people look at that as not a good move for the Republican Party to have taken. But I mean, he is a historian in his own right, and that may be his conclusion. He also thinks that a government shutdown is probably likely going to happen this time around. He doesn't he doesn't seem to think it's a bad thing.

You know, I mean, and that's what's interesting because Republicans, you know, it's two different things. And I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts a lot of times with this because there's so many crises specifically in the House of Representatives right now. But, you know, Republicans lost seats in 1998 after the Clinton impeachment. And so that sort of hangs over some of this. But I think just generally, you know,

there was probably a perception that Republicans reached too far, specifically in the United States House. But with regard to a shutdown,

I've used this metaphor before, but this feels very much like a hurricane is coming and everyone on Capitol Hill is putting plywood on their windows. Chiefs of staff are starting to really consider which staff is essential. You know, I mean, trips are being canceled, so I don't think he's alone in that. And I think also just in reporting, you can watch what people do rather than what they say, and it still matches up.

Yeah, he just doesn't seem to think it's going to be a big deal. He thought it was a good thing. And he thinks it won't backfire on the Republicans. I mean, we'll have to wait and see. Generally, this did not go well for Republicans in 2013. But then, you know, a few days later, the Obamacare website crashed and it's sort of all of the negative momentum against them evaporated and they had a pretty good midterm. So how much something sticks, but

you know, you're going to start getting constituents whose things are ruined and lives are more difficult. And we start having questions about social security checks. And so I, you know, I think they're volatile, but generally they have, when the Republican party has shut down the government, it has not gone well for the Republican party. Right. So the interesting thing, one interesting thing he said was that like, first of all, he thinks that

McCarthy should be slow and go about this impeachment inquiry in a very deliberate and slow way. He said that he admitted that they weren't able to really convince the American people that, you know, perjury was worth impeachment. Right. In the case of Bill Clinton. And he said that. And I said, well, you know, there's really no reason.

smoking gun yet. And he was like, Republicans are going to need six smoking guns, essentially, to be able to convince the American public that Biden is worthy of impeachment.

And I asked him, I was like, I don't know. What do you think about the fact that he thinks that they're going to need six smoking guns to prove that this is worthy of impeachment? I mean, he has the experience of wisdom and having gone through this in the first place. Um, and I mean, you can sit there and say there were smoking guns with Clinton's impeachment. He, you know, I think it's fair to say he perjured himself. I think he may have pleaded to that. Um,

But, yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, the Republican critique over the Democratic impeachments in 2019 and 2021 were that they went too fast. There's always a complaint about the process when the Democrats do things. But going into this, what's different about this.

impeachment shut down all of this this is happening in a presidential election cycle this is not a midterm and so if they want to take this slow we're going to start reaching into the spring and uh you know this this could be a general election campaign um my sense kind of just recollecting 2019 impeachment on the house side was democrats wanted to get this put away done before um the uh

the election got going in full swing. And so going slow might work. It might be a drumbeat of negative news every single night. You know, I can see where he's

coming from on that. But what I think is going to happen is Republican pollsters are going to be in the field in October when all of this starts playing out for real and it starts becoming a tangible thing, both impeachment and the shutdown. And I, you know, I think that the speed will probably be more determined by what those, you know, internal polling that, you know, Americans may never know exist may influence this more than trying to make a case.

Yeah, I think you're right. I was thinking the same thing when he was saying that. I was like, the slower you go, the deeper you get into the election and the more likely you could either be blamed. This could backfire. Or if you get it over with before, there's enough distance. But at the same time, if the drumbeat continues through the election year, sure, that could be damaging to Biden unless it's seen as overreach.

One of the interesting things he said is that he actually doesn't believe there needs to be an impeachment vote at the end of this. He thinks that if McCarthy can't sway the American public, that there was real corruption in the Biden family. And if he can't prove it directly through like money exchange, tax records, you know, testimony, et cetera, he doesn't think that there has to be a vote.

That's sort of something people in town have been debating right now, is whether there needs to be a vote to impeach or not. So, and that point was made to me a week ago when Kevin McCarthy launched this, there may never be a vote. You know, I mean, House Republicans, even some of the ones who are in vulnerable seats, have sort of consolidated behind this. They've consolidated behind the idea of an impeachment inmate.

inquiry, but they have not had to cast a vote on this yet. So I think it's up in the air, and I could see it playing out where there's a strategy of doing an investigation, but keeping those members from actually having to cast a vote that can be used against them. Say you're in a district that Joe Biden won, I think there's 18 Republicans, and that can hurt you. But I don't

see the Freedom Caucus going along with that. I don't see Marjorie Taylor Greene going along with that or Lauren Boebert. I think everything Kevin McCarthy does, there's a push and a pull in either direction. And if you do one thing to help one side of the vulnerable members, you're going to probably aggravate the Freedom Caucus and vice versa. So this is just...

As unpredictable of a situation as I have ever seen in the House of Representatives. This entire fall is just something that is impossible to game out. And I just can't stress enough that we're really operating day to day of how things... I have not seen anything this unstable unless you count the insurrection. But going back to when John Boehner announced his resignation, and we really had no idea who was going to be Speaker of the House.

in 2015. So I just think this is a really unstable situation. Yeah, I think you're right about that, the fact that it is very unstable. But he seems to think that these two impeachment and funding the government, government shutdown fights, that they are happening concurrently, but they're parallel. They're not crossing. I don't necessarily believe him. I think that...

the impeachment inquiry was essentially a carrot, you know, for the House Freedom Caucus. But I don't think he would ever admit that, right? I mean, there's a widespread assumption that that's what's going on. But this is just the most convoluted, basically what I think the best way to describe this, and I hope I'm getting the financial terms correctly because it's been a long time since I understood checks, but Kevin McCarthy, since he won the speakership,

has kind of been writing hot checks, putting off things and waiting for the political capital to come in this fall to kind of cover those bases, cover those checks. And what we're starting to see is he doesn't have the political capital to cover. And

It is just highly volatile. And there's a string of other issues, which I won't bore your audience with, but are extremely serious to individual sectors of American life that are also part of this, have nothing to do with impeachment and a shutdown. So this is just a mess. Every time you turn around in the fall, there is a new problem. And it could go... It runs from food stamps to the Pentagon funding. And so it is just... Everything is coming...

You know, I'm mixing my metaphors, but the can has been kicked as far as it can go. And there's a whole bunch of cans.

So, yeah, he doesn't seem to think there'll be much of a political backlash. He pretty much thinks do the inquiry, see what you find. And if you find nothing that can convince the American people, it's not a big deal. It didn't really impact them. That's his takeaway. I think if there are problems that Americans face based on the shutdown and there's also an impeachment going on, that's very an inquiry that's very complicated. I think in a lot of ways, this Hunter Biden thing, um,

it mirrors the Ukraine impeachment and that it's so complicated. And I mean, I've had sources wonder if some of these members of Congress even understand, and these are Republican sources, the paperwork they're dealing with and the shell companies. And so you do wonder, yeah,

You know, do they, does it stick? No, I get what you're saying. Like, does it tell a story that Americans can understand when they're going to the ballot box? I totally understand what you mean with that. And the other thing is, he wants to go even further and he's like, let's go after the Hillary Clinton foundation and let's go after the corrupt DOJ. And, and it's like, really, I think that you're just going in such a sprawling direction. Like, how do you tell one single story? If you, if you have so many different stories.

And also six different smoking guns. Is that enough? I mean, is that going to confuse people as well? Are six different smoking guns going to confuse people? It could be flooding the zone. But the other thing to remember is

if they launch all these investigations, they may stumble onto something they didn't even know they were looking for. And that is what happened with Benghazi and the email server. And Whitewater sort of went on a completely different track. So yes, but, and so I didn't do that investigation, the Whitewater investigation. He reminded me that didn't actually do. Yeah.

They were handed the investigation. Right. So, yes. But so, yes. So I guess I would just say, I think I'm skeptical of that worldview. He is a very brilliant man, but he has also in the past over, I don't know what the right term is, but has, you know, they thought,

the shutdown in 96 and the impeachment were going to work well and they didn't. So I am a little skeptical of his political judgment in this context, but that's not to say he's a brilliant, I mean, he is a brilliant tactician. So I think it's an interesting, I guess what I'm curious about is, um,

How much of that is sincere political analysis and how much of it is, you know, setting the stage and political posturing? I mean, he does advise Kevin McCarthy and he does advise Donald Trump as well. And I said to him, well, you know, Donald Trump has been pushing for the impeachment. Bob Dole wasn't pushing for impeachment. Right. How does that change it? And he's like, oh, you know, Kevin McCarthy can chew gum and walk at the same time. Right.

So he seems to be a pretty big defender of Kevin McCarthy. And that is one thing I will say, you know, McCarthy is in a very vulnerable spot

I would not. He could be thrown out of office. But there are some loyal, loyal defenders of Kevin McCarthy on Capitol Hill. And there are it's more Republicans whose names we don't know and are sort of in the mass of I don't call them moderates. I call them pragmatists. And so there is a they all so many of them view him as their big brother in Congress. So I would not underestimate the loyalty toward him, both in the Congress and sort of in the larger congressional world of which Newt Gingrich is a part of.

So, OK, let's just get down to it, Abby. Do you really believe Newt Gingrich? Do you think this is actually going to work out for Republicans in 2020? Is it actually going to help them?

My instinct is no, I have been proven wrong. But what I think the danger Republicans have is if they're too gleeful about a shutdown, which is going to be hard because a lot of their constituents want a shutdown. And so if this is something that seems like they're enjoying doing and they're having fun and there are constituents in other districts that are not quite so safe, that are feeling the pinch, the inconvenience, and it looks like it's a party, I don't think that's going to play well for Republicans. Okay, well...

We shall see. Let's see winners and losers of the week. Who do you think of this week will come out a winner and who will come out a loser? I think Zelensky will probably come out with Ukraine aid, don't you? I think so. There seems to be less alarm in those foreign policy circles.

Honestly, I think the biggest winner on Capitol Hill, the more dysfunctional the House gets is Mitch McConnell because no one's paying attention to the Senate. And the Senate in comparison looks much more functional and smooth. And I mean, I wrote last week a diminished Mitch McConnell still looks more stable than what we're seeing on the other side of the Capitol. Right. And no one's talking about his health, right? Is he even doing pressers right now? Yeah. So that makes him seem... I assume he'll do the weekly one.

Yeah. So it's just that the sideshow has moved. Biggest loser of the week? I would probably say for now, Kevin McCarthy, but I may eat my words in a couple of days. That just seems like an untenable situation he's in, but he has defied expectations over and over. But I would say last week was not a good week for Kevin McCarthy. Yeah. So we think he'll... I think he'll continue to lose until they finally...

get a deal if they do at the 11th hour. And if not, then it's a shutdown and it'll just be a mess.

And it's a lot harder to get into a shutdown than get out of one. Last week, who would have known the biggest loser of the week was going to be Joe Biden? Son indicted, impeachment inquiry. It was a really rough one. It was a pretty rough week. I just have tunnel vision on Congress, but it was a pretty bad week for Joe Biden too, on a number of fronts, including the David Ignatius piece. Oh yeah. That really hurts his core because he really does. He's sensitive to like the elitist Ivy League issues

you know, opinion columnists. He cares a lot what the New York Times opinion columns say about him. So that's, even Maureen Dowd, your friend, he's very, very sensitive to what she writes about him. These are his peers and these are the people he's grown up with. Right, exactly. Well, he doesn't see them as his peers, actually, I've been told. He sees them, he has a chip on his shoulder. He's like, he thinks that they think they're better than him, you know?

Oh, he's not an Ivy League guy. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess what just these are the writers he's been reading his whole life. And so I think it's right when David Ignatius and Maureen Dowd weighs in, it means a lot more than a 35 year old writer at the Washington Post or New York Times. It's a personal thing. Totally. Yep. Okay. Thanks, Abby. This was great. Love having you on to break it all down. Thanks for having me.

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