Gingrich: Trump will ‘probably get re-elected' if ‘we can reopen safely with reasonable precautions’

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells Just the News that President Trump will "probably get re-elected" if the U.S. economy re-opens "safely with reasonable precautions" in place.

However, Gingrich said Trump's re-election "gamble" is pushing for re-opening and holding campaign rallies while Democratic challenger Joe Biden stays "hiding" in his “basement" out of the public eye. 

Gingrich said Trump "probably won’t" win if states shut down again and the "economy goes back in the tank."

Trump held a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last week, and some members of his staff and Secret Service tested positive for coronavirus. Biden has not held any campaign rallies. The Democratic National Committee announced that they are moving toward a virtual convention.

Gingrich was asked Friday whether he thinks holding campaign rallies and a traditional Republican convention could backfire on Trump and cause a loss in November.

“I think the jury's out. If Trump is right and we can reopen safely with reasonable precautions, he'll probably get re-elected. If Trump is wrong and as a result, states have to shut down again and the economy goes back in the tank, then he probably won't get reelected, no matter what the consequence is, because at that point, people will say, 'Well, that didn't work.' So there's a lot riding on getting the next couple months to work,” Gingrich, author of the new book, “Trump and the American Future: Solving the Great Problems of Our Time,” said during an exclusive interview with Just the News.

“I think the longer they can keep Biden in the basement the better off they are. Every time he comes out of the basement like yesterday in Pennsylvania, he said that 120 million Americans had died from COVID, which is insane. Last week, he said he was running for the U.S. Senate. I think he has a fairly limited grip of things, and I think the more that they can hide him, the better.”

The 2012 Republican presidential candidate said that it “makes perfect sense that they [DNC officials] are going to have a virtual convention because it lets them control it with minimum risk,” adding that Trump has “a problem that he's actually governing and not focused as much on messaging as he should be.”

Biden, a former vice president and senator, is leading Trump in recent national polls. Gingrich said that “the challenge for the president is that he believes his re-election depends, in part, on people having a sense of normalcy” in their lives.

“So he wants to have baseball come back. He wants to have football in September, you know, and I think he's pushing the margins on the grounds that it may cost him right now, but that it won't cost him in the long run. It's a real gamble,” Gingrich said.

“Yes, for some people, they prefer safety to risk taking and it's very clear that Trump is a risk taker, and it's very clear that between the virus and the economy and the Chinese etc. we have a lot of risk out there right now. So it's conceivable that Biden, by hiding, looks passive, and looks non-threatening and that may be reassuring to people, they may say, ‘Oh, wow, you know, Biden would never do any of these things.’ Now, it's also true that Biden probably wouldn't do anything,” he also said.

Gingrich argued that Biden “would have been a disaster in the first couple months of the epidemic because it was Trump's entrepreneurial skill that convinced the American business community to retool and to produce so many masks and so many ventilators that we're now supplying the whole world, and that took a Trump kind of president.”

Gingrich speculated that Biden campaign officials are telling the candidate to “practice your putting game or play Solitaire, just stay quiet, stay out of it. Do as little as possible and let the world focus on Trump."

Addressing the lack of access the press has had to Biden during the pandemic, Gingrich said the mainstream media doesn’t want to press him on the issues of the day.

“Look, 90-something percent of the media is a propaganda machine for the left. They don't want to hurt Biden – they’re so desperate to beat Trump,” he said. “The news media’s No. 1 goal is to beat Trump.”

The former congressman from Georgia said Biden would be a “passive” president.

“If what we think will help America for the next four years is a passive president while people tear down statues and loot stores and create autonomous zones, now, Biden will be terrific,” he said during the interview.

“But if you think we need somebody very strong, because we're in danger from the Chinese, we're in danger from the virus," Gingrich continued. "We have to get the economy growing again and we have a radical element in America trying to tear down the country, then you need somebody like Trump, even if sometimes he's off putting. I think part of the people who elected him did so, even though they thought his style was not very good, but because they thought his toughness and his courage were necessary if we're going to turn the country around."

According to Gingrich, Trump must do three things to win re-election.

“He has to get the economy growing, period, that is the base without which nothing else works. Second, he has to communicate what a Biden-Schumer-Pelosi world would be like, so people understand it's not just Biden but it's this entire movement that would radically change America in ways you and I can't imagine,” he said.

Gingrich suggested a 12-month holiday from the payroll tax to help small businesses and put more money in Americans' pockets.

“Maybe 100% deductibility for businesses so that you could really have a dramatic investment and you could also bring all the manufacturing back from China, maybe an infrastructure program big enough that our transportation system would be as modern and as efficient as the Chinese and a number of things he could offer that would be sort of a Trump vision of the future,” he said.