Former House Speaker and historian Newt Gingrich suggested a three-point plan to President-elect Trump and other elected officials to end the California wildfires, including mobilizing the U.S. military if needed.

"We ought to have three goals, end the fires, whatever it takes, if you have to mobilize the military, whatever you have to do, end the fires," he said on the "John Solomon Reports" podcast.

"Second, find a way, at the lowest cost and the quickest speed, to get people back into their homes, which means suspending and overriding an amazing number of rules in California, all of them designed to take longer, etc.," he added.

Gingrich also said elected officials have to ask themselves what needs to be done so this situation doesn't occur again.

"Not from climate change"

"These fires were a man made problem. They're not from climate change. We've had fires in California for thousands of years. They were probably caused by humans, maybe at a campground," he said. "And then, of course, the Santa Ana winds are not new. We have them every single year."

He praised the Los Angeles fire chief Kristin Crowley for showing "real courage in telling people bluntly and publicly that her requests for funds were cut again and again were rejected."

He continued, saying, "I think they had over 100 fire vehicles that were in maintenance that had not been fixed yet because the budget was too low. I mean, these things are just, I think, criminal, and I think that the the city and county and state governments should be held accountable."

The former 2012 GOP presidential candidate said the California state government passed a referendum in 2014 to build four new reservoirs for water but "not one of them has been built."

"I think that we need to look at a very serious way, at forcing both that they clear out all the problems, see if things rebuild rapidly and inexpensively, and then forcing that they do things," he said. "It's liberal incompetence at its worst."

A "true breakthrough"

Gingrich described Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, led by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, as a "true breakthrough" that shows Trump is "coming back dramatically bolder than when he left" office in 2020.

"I'm very excited by this. I think it is a true breakthrough, and it's typical of what you're going to see with Donald Trump, which is he's now had four years to think about how bad government is, having seen it from the inside, and he's coming back dramatically bolder than when he left," said Gingrich.

"I was looking at a study of how much paperwork there is in healthcare and it's absolutely staggering. We think that 25% of U.S. health care spending is in administrative costs. Now half of that, just half of that, would be $600 billion a year in savings. So you look at that stuff, and you say, you know, bring me Musk and Ramaswamy," he added.

Gingrich called Musk a "genuinely serious guy" who has "relentlessly" reduced costs at his companies. "When he took over Twitter and turned it into X, I think he reduced costs by 70%," he said. He said Ramaswamy is a "brilliant entrepreneur who has already founded two different companies that are worth over $1 billion dollars"

Gingrich cautioned DOGE to be "very careful not to get sucked into marginal improvements of failed systems." 

"He [Musk] did not invent a cheaper version of Boeing. He invented at SpaceX, a totally new system. And we are on the verge of so many potential breakthroughs that it's just unbelievable," he said.

Gingrich also said that Trump won the November, in part, by appealing to sports fans. "In a sports centered country, you believe in winners and losers," he said. 

As an example, Gingrich said that if someone suggested that in order to be fair, a football team should let its "weakest, poorest quarterback play" because he "really felt bad not being allowed to" play because he will feel better about himself.

"Everybody who is a sports fan would say, 'are you just nuts?'" he said. "Meanwhile, Georgetown University has a grief room where you can get cookies and warm milk if Trump's victory overwhelms your ability to function."