Two weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump has been successful in fulfilling many of the promises he campaigned on, but he’s nowhere near finished, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.
Speaking Monday at The Heritage Foundation for the final installment in his six-part series on understanding Trump and Trumpism, Gingrich described the president as “the new presidential”—delivering on what he said he would.
Gingrich also addressed those on the left who question Trump’s legitimacy as a president.
“By definition, whatever he does is presidential, it’s just a new presidential,” he said. “So the new presidential tweets. That doesn’t mean he has to give up tweeting and start writing in longhand with a quill pen to think he’s presidential.”
Political elites and left-leaning news media refuse to understand Trump because he isn’t a politician, according to Gingrich.
“He is a business leader who became president. He never became a politician in between,” Gingrich said. “He has no interest in learning how to be a politician. He has every interest in getting things done.”
Gingrich cited Trump’s recent executive order, which will halt individuals from seven countries from entering the United States for 90 days, as yet another incident to infuriate the liberal news media.
“He’s been saying it for 10 months. You would think at some point in the 10 months they would have gone, ‘Oh, what if he actually means it?’” Gingrich said.
The news media’s reporting of the executive order, describing it as a “Muslim ban,” was a “total, dangerous lie,” Gingrich said.
“Every newspaper and every television reporter who said it should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.
According to Gingrich, the media’s irresponsible “lie” sent a signal to over a billion Muslims about something that is “totally false.”
“The largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia; it’s not touched,” he noted. “The second-largest Muslim country, by the way, is India, it’s not touched. Go down the list.”
While the order was not flawless, Gingrich said, the left would still be outraged, regardless of the timing.
“Do any of you doubt that if he’d done this six weeks from now with prior notice that there would have been demonstrations for days leading up to it?” Gingrich asked.
Trump’s favorability and poll numbers will reflect the media’s biased coverage, Gingrich predicted.
“I guarantee you, for a while, Trump’s poll numbers will be bad. And they’ll be bad because every element of the elite media will lie about him every day.”
