Speaker 1: Newt Gingrich has admitted the devastating reason that Trump will win. It's
not devastating to Trump. It's devastating to the Republican Party. Laura Ingraham,
Fox News propagandist, interviewed Newt Gingrich about the entrance of Republican
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis into the 2024 presidential primary. And Newt Gingrich points
out DeSantis is plenty smart, but he's not able to talk to people who might only have a third,
fourth or fifth grade education. The way that Trump is now the start of this clip is a clip
of DeSantis talking about the financial system. And the framing is, Hey, great,
that the Santos is talking about that. But does the average voter even understand this? It's a
funny premise. And then Newt lays down the humiliating reality about the average Trump
or Republican voter at this point in time. Speaker 3: We will not be a free society if
major financial institutions can do through the economy. What people could not achieve
through the ballot box. Our rights will be restricted, will be the end result.
And that's not healthy for a free country. Speaker 4: Now, Newt and it's a good point,
but is it can people grab on to that and kind of understand the Contract with America? What
that what is he getting out there? I mean, we you and I know, but can the folks around the dinner
table understand that we're not into politics? Speaker 2: This may seem like an odd comment,
but I think that he's very, very smart. He clearly did very well at Yale. He is clearly
capable of thinking about big ideas. But, you know, Ronald Reagan was probably equally smart,
but he also understood the to communicate so that everyday folks understood it. One of Trump's great
advantages is he talks at a level where third, fourth and fifth grade educations can say,
Oh, yeah, I get that. I understand it. And in fact, Trump has now made the Republican Party
the party of working Americans in a way that probably hasn't been true for almost 100 years.
Speaker 1: That's a bit of an exaggeration, but the point here is still an interesting one.
Speaker 2: So the challenge for the sentence is take that interesting sentence and figure
out how do you boil it down to a slogan and to a specific thing. I think it's fair to
say and I know this from the polling data we do, that the America's New Majority project,
the American people fear big business. Okay. Speaker 1: So the truth is that what Newt
Gingrich is saying is maybe an inadvertent but completely devastating burn of Trump supporters.
And it exposes the sad reality of the Republican Party today. You can frame what Newt said there
in two ways, and they're very different. You can say the Republican Party is now the party of the
working class. And DeSantis simply needs to hone his Yale education to be more understandable and
also align more with that working class that is now the bulk of the Republican Party or something.
Or you can interpret that as the average Republican voter is so uninformed and so often
ignorant that you need to dumb things down so that even an adult with a third grade education could
understand it. One of those two interpretations has a much more negative connotation, and it's the
second one. I believe that the truth is clear, and this is not about Republicans are dumb.
This is about understanding realities. The Republican Party has become a party.
How can I say this? That appeals to the lowest common denominator, panders to ignorance and fear
and rejects facts and science. They also dismiss, often dismiss any new ones thought as left wing
nonsense. And the party at the same time doesn't want to invest in public education and hasn't done
so in many red states. They don't want to promote critical thinking among its base, especially in
red states where we know that the educational outcomes are worse than in blue states. So as
a result, the party, the Republican Party, has alienated many of these moderate, independent,
educated voters who are increasingly voting for Democrats rather than Republicans. Those are folks
who value reason and competence over rhetoric and charisma. And DeSantis doesn't have charisma
either, by the way. The data are not blurry or unclear or gray. It's clear, crystal clear as
far as education in red versus blue states. You look at the top ten states with the best school
systems. They were all blue states or are swing states that voted Biden in 2020, the reliably blue
or swing, but voted Biden 2020. You look at the ten states with the worst school systems and worst
education. They were all red states that voted Trump in 2020. So this is a reality. And whether
you put a positive spin on it like Gingrich does about the party of the working people, as now the
Republican Party or you say this is an electorate that has been dramatically dumbed down by virtue
of the policies they support. Either way, you have to recognize that Democrats do have an
edge over Republicans when it comes to educational attainment among American adults. When you look at
a bachelor's degree or higher, 41% of Democrats have a bachelor's degree or higher. Only 31% of
Republicans do. That's a massive difference. If you look at high school only high school diploma
or less. About a third of Republicans have not gone beyond high school diploma and some have even
a lesser education than that, compared to only 28% of Democrats whose educational attainment is that
low. And this is a gap that continues to widen and it's widening among white voters as well.
Education influences political preferences and behavior. DeSantis is trying to position himself
as a viable alternative to Trump in 2024, and he talks about his record handling COVID and he talks
about we were worst hit, but we did really well. And he's endorsing the culture war agenda of Woke
goes to die in Florida, and he's restricting voting rights. He's restricting what teachers
are allowed to teach. He's planning. Critical race theory and trans athletes and allowing permit less
gun carry like he's doing all of that stuff. But Newt Gingrich is getting to a devastating reality,
which is that DeSantis, at least so far and I get it, it's only been a few days, but he's been
sort of campaigning much longer than he's been an official candidate. DeSantis has not articulated
a clear and compelling message that distinguishes him from Trump in a way
that will resonate with the broader Republican electorate. And Gingrich accurately points out
the Santos has to find some way to make the case for himself. It could be too late. And
I know it's like he hasn't even run it. Been running for a week. How is it too
late? DeSantis may have already alienated many voters with what happened between the time that
Trump announced and the time that DeSantis announced. And now you've got Tim Scott and
Nikki Haley and all these folks taking just little percentages of the electorate. DeSantis
needs a path to more than 50%. It's either by taking everyone else's support, including
some of Trump's or growing the base by so much that he brings in people who are who are not,
as of today, likely Republican primary voters. If he can find people who today are saying,
I probably won't vote in the primary and get them to say, oh, now I'm interested in voting
in the primary, that's another path forward. I don't really see his ability to do it. And he's
already talking about pardoning Trump, which I don't know that's going to help him very much.