Fox's Newt Gingrich: “Trump would be much better off to let the government close”
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From the December 20, 2024, edition of Fox News' Faulkner Focus
HARRIS FAULKNER (ANCHOR): I have a very special guest to wait and watch with us. I should thank you. Newt Gingrich, Fox News contributor and former Speaker of the House, so much experience here. You said yesterday, and I caught your post on X, President Trump and Republicans should not be afraid of a government shutdown. Do you still feel that way?
NEWT GINGRICH (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Certainly. When I was speaker, we had two government shutdowns, one was pretty long, I think 20 some days. It convinced President Clinton that we were serious and it convinced the American people that we were going to keep our word even if it was hard. I think everybody misjudged what President Trump won when they bring in a fifteen hundred page bill that is a joke. That was not a continuing resolution as you pointed out. This was actually a brand-new omnibus spending bill. It was a total violation, it was politics as usual. Don't worry what the candidate says before the election, he's going to sell you out afterwards. Well, Trump didn't sell them out, and now we are facing the first great reality of making American great again, which is a Congress filled with people who love pork, love taking money home to the district, love deficit spending, love big bureaucracies and they are colliding with the man the American people picked to change things. I think that President Trump would be much better off to let the government close, to let Biden sit there as a totally incompetent president presiding over a mess and to go to the country and say to the country I am not going to be a president who sells you out. I need your help to convince the Congress to pass a good bill. I think the country would respond.