Newt Gingrich on Varney and Co | Fox Business Channel | April 6, 2020

Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich appeared with Stuart Varney's show Varney and Co via the Fox Business Channel on April 6, 2020

Newt Gingrich
Varney and Co.
04/06/2020

NEWT:

Well, first of all, the first big thing that President Trump did was cut off flights from China. I'm talking to you from Italy, a country where they did not cut off. They had 100,000 Chinese in northern Italy. They had three flights a week from Wuhan to northern Italy. They did not cut them off because of political correctness. So, a number of weeks they had more and more people coming in that had the disease from Wuhan. So, the result was in Italy they got into a real crisis. They closed everything down across the whole country, so they that you have, you can go to a grocery store, you can go to a pharmacy, you can go to a gas station. You cannot be out on the street for some good reason, or they fine you 3,000 euro. Police are on the street asking people, why are you here? What is your reason. So we saw a case here of being way too slow. President Trump went in initially. And I think what Doctor Birx said today was exactly right in a White House briefing if the Chinese had not lied and the world health organization had not lied we would have all been seven or eight weeks faster, we might have actually contained it in Wuhan but because they lied to all of us, they thought the controllable SARS-like infection was nothing like the pandemic we got. I think China and the world health organization, which is basically now run by the Chinese have a lot to answer for what they did to the world. In terms of Sanders comments, look, that is nonsense. If you go back and look how many Democrats attacked Trump when he cut off the trips from China and those trips bought us six or seven weeks. Lastly, I just say, we just put in four hospitals, a 2100 hospital at the Javits Center, four medical centers and a U.S. Naval hospital ship in New York. Now that is a real surge. That is really focusing resources. I don't know what Sanders thinks he would have done but I will guarantee you he doesn't have the management talent that Donald Trump has.

NEWT:

Look. I think there are people in the news media who hate Trump so much that even if it damages America, they can't help themselves. They get up every morning knowing Donald Trump did something terrible. They just didn’t know what it is. So, they spend the whole day looking for an excuse to fight. I think the president in organizing the quality team he put together, the vice president who has done a great job of managing this process, the number of companies who have come in to help. In fact if anything the repudiation of Sanders kind of socialism, there has been a huge number of private companies who have brought a great deal of assets to the table, including in particular the pharmaceutical companies that the Democrats like to attack all the time and yet it is the pharmaceutical companies that give us the hope that we're going to be able to actually solve this. So, I don't think the president was perfect, but I think he did an amazing job in a very difficult environment. Nobody saw this coming on January 1st when we tried to go see the Chinese -- by the way, Secretary Azar first approached the Chinese on January 6th. So it wasn't that we weren't trying. We were just being lied to. I think the president will be regarded by historians having done a pretty good job and in pushing and shoving, he has done a lot of things to improve the system pretty dramatically in speed and effectiveness and in getting things done. We put up a hospital in New York in less than four-days. That is better than the Chinese did in Wuhan. Could only be done by using emergency decrees which the president did.

NEWT:

My wife as you know is the Ambassador to the Vatican. She is involved every single day in reviewing information from around Italy. It does look like the rate of increase has slowed dramatically from over 10% to about 3 1/2%. We got a few more days continuing to slow down we might actually be at the crest and begin to come down. It is encouraging. We're all still hunkered down in place. We're all still very aware how dangerous this is, and I don't think anybody wants to rush out and risk reigniting the pandemic here in Italy.