Hmm. I think Lawrence is on to something here.
"Newt Gingrich seems to be very worried about the January six investigation, so wary that he suggested that the members of the committee should end up in jail. Here's something that might explain Gingrich's fear of the January six committee. Today, Business Insider notes that Newt Gingrich launched his attack on the committee this weekend, quote, 'about two weeks after the panel subpoenaed his longtime former aide who also coauthored a book with him,' O'Donnell said.
"On January 10th, the committee subpoenaed Ross Worthington with the committee, who the committee said he worked on a draft of a speech that Donald Trump told his followers to go to the Capitol and fight like hell. Ross Worthington worked for Newt Gingrich before he joined the White House staff. He coauthored a book with Gingrich in 2012 after serving in Newt Gingrich's losing presidential campaign. Here's what Newt Gingrich said about the committee this weekend."
I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all gonna come crashing down, and the wolves are gonna find out that they are now sheep, and they are the ones who in fact are, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kind of laws they are breaking.
"Joining us now is Jonathan Chait, writer for New York Magazine, his new article is entitled, 'Newt Gingrich invented Donald Trump's lock them up politics: How one man was the bridge from Reagan-ism to Trumpism.
O'Donnell said one of the striking things about Gingrich prior to now is how long he was accepted among the Sunday morning shows as a Republican in good standing, who had important things to share with the nation about the way he saw governing in America.
"He's always had a knack for presenting himself as a very high minded idealist," Chait said.
"But really, the main reason he was able to take control of the Republican party, in the 1990s, was because he went to Republicans and said, 'You guys are too nice, you have to get rough, you have to get tough, you have to be as vicious as the Democrats are. You have to destroy them. We have to practice politics in a completely different way.' That was how he toppled the Republican leadership in 1990. And that was the spare it brought to the, quote, unquote, Republican revolution in the 1990s.
"The way that they fought with and against the Clinton administration reflected the spirit. They really saw Bill Clinton as being totally illegitimate. They would shut down the government and they would impeach him because they didn't think he had any right to stand in the way of their policies in spite of the fact that he had been elected president of the United states. So I think, you know, if you want to go back and look at the Republican party's historical evolution into its current phase, where Donald Trump is the leader of the party, Gingrich is really an important figure to study. That's what I tried to do."
"And his rhetoric was a version of Trump before Trump and his recklessness, his lying accusations when he was a junior member of the House, going to the House floor at night when the C-SPAN camera was on to accuse Democrats of being sympathizers with communism, Tip O'Neill then ordered the C-SPAN camera to pan the House, to show that Gingrich was speaking to an empty chamber. But, because of C-SPAN, he was speaking to people out there."
