Transcript: Newt Gingrich interviewed by Univision’s Jorge Ramos

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Key

MOD Moderator
JR: Jorge Ramos
NG: Newt Gingrich
Q: Audience Question

MOD: Again, thank you so much for being here. On behalf of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Miami Dade College, and Univision, I want to welcome you for our discussion this morning with former Speaker, Presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich.

We will have 20 exclusive privileged minutes with Speaker Gingrich, in light of the current presidential contest. The 20-minute discussion will be broadcast live in English on Univision.com. Properties of the event will also be broadcast throughout several news properties, including a special edition of our public affairs show, Al Punto, this coming Sunday. Jorge Ramos, award-winning journalist and host of Univision’s Al Punto, will be leading the first part of the discussion. We will then move on to questions from our online audience, as well as from you.

Now, I want to remind you to turn off your cell phones, silence them please, and that there will be no flash photography during the event. I want to welcome our own Jorge Ramos on to the stage, so we can begin. [Applause.] Welcome, Jorge.

JR: Thank you. Thank you for coming.

MOD: And finally, without further ado, Speaker Newt Gingrich. Welcome. [Applause.]

JR: So you want to say a few words in Spanish, I’m sure, right? [Laughter.]

NG: He always has me on the edge. I was going to say buenos dias y bienvenidos a los estudiantes de Miami-Dade College. [Applause.]

JR: The last time we spoke you said we were going to be doing the interview in Spanish. But today I think we will stick to English, and then —

NG: I can listen to some of your Spanish, if you go slow. But I’m too timid to respond. I speak pigeon Spanish.

JR: — pero habla muy bien en Español, eh?

NG: Si.

JR: Entiende las cosas perfectamente.

NG: No, not perfect. Working. [Laughter.]

JR: Vamos a empezar. Bien?

NG: No —

JR: Let’s start —

NG: The faster you go, the more incompetent I become. [Laughter.]

JR: — okay. So let’s just start. In the last debate you said — and I am quoting — that “a Gingrich presidency will not tolerate four more years of a Cuban dictatorship.” The Castro regime, as you know, has outlasted 11 —

NG: Yes.

JR: — U.S. Presidents. So what will you do? Will you invade Cuba? Are you proposing the killing of the Castro brothers, as the U.S. Army did with Osama bin Laden? What’s the plan?

NG: Well, the plan would be to take all of the tools that Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Prime Minister Thatcher used to break the Soviet Empire. They went at it psychologically, they went at it economically, they went at it diplomatically, they went at it with covert operations. They maximized the growth of solidarity. They provided tools, they provided — this is the olden days, so for the students this will seem quaint — but they provided fax machines and other devices. So, what you would want to do is you would want to network everybody. It’s also psychological warfare. You want to say to the entire younger generation of the dictatorship, “You have no future propping up the dictatorship. You have a wonderful future if you are willing to become a democracy.” And so you want to undermine and cause a generational divide between these guys who represent, you know, the fantasies of 1959. I mean it’s a long time to have people live in misery because of some dream of a guy who clearly is, you know, a dictator.

JR: But if the U.S. bombed Gaddafi, is it fair to do the same thing with the Castros?

NG: No, I think at the moment you don’t need to. If you watch — I mean first of all, in that case you had an uprising. Now, I would say bluntly — because I find it fascinating that Obama is intrigued with Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, but doesn’t quite notice Cuba. Now, I will just argue if there was a genuine legitimate uprising, we would, of course, be on the side of the people. And we should be prepared to be on the side of the people. But in that sense I don’t see why Cuba should be sacrosanct, and we should say, “Oh, don’t do anything to hurt” — you know, we’re very prepared to back people in Libya. We may end up backing people in Syria. But now Cuba? Hands off Cuba. That’s bologna. People of Cuba deserve freedom. [Applause.]

JR: Mr. Gingrich, what do you think about Romney’s idea of self-deportation for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country?

NG: Oh, come —

JR: Self-deportation.

NG: — I just — can I ask you a question?

JR: Sure. [Laughter.]

NG: I mean you’re a very sophisticated observer, and the most widely watched analyst in Spanish language television in the United States. How close are you to breaking up, laughing out loud, at this fantasy?

JR: What do you think about Romney’s idea of self-deportation? [Laughter.]

NG: I think you have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and automatic, you know, $20 million a year income with no work to have some fantasy this far from reality. Remember that I talked very specifically about people who have been here a long time, who are grandmothers and grandfathers, who have been paying their bills, they have been working, they are part of the community. Now, for Romney to believe that somebody’s grandmother is going to be so cut off that she is going to self-deport, I mean this verges — this is an Obama-level fantasy.

JR: You called him “anti-immigrant”.

NG: Well, he certainly shows no concern for the humanity of people who are already here. I mean I just think the idea we’re going to deport grandmothers and grandfathers is a sufficient level of inhumanity — first of all, it’s never going to happen. I mean I personally — I was first involved in this in the 1980s, when I worked with Ronald Reagan, and we passed Simpson-Mazzoli for the purpose of controlling the border, establishing an effective guest worker program, and we had amnesty at that point. So I would just say this is not an issue I took up last Tuesday, okay? We need to have a practical, honest conversation about how to have a series of steps that get us to legality for the entire country. That does mean, I believe, most of the people who are here who have no real connections will go home and apply for a guest worker program — or somebody yesterday said maybe “temporary worker” is a better title — but a program where they’re going to be here to work with no expectation of citizenship, but a real expectation that they’re going to earn an income and they’re going to be better off than they were back home.

JR: You’re not for immigration reform, either.

NG: Oh, I’m for a lot of —

JR: You’re not — you do not support the DREAM Act for students.

NG: — no, I’m not going to let you define what immigration reform is. I’m for a lot of immigration —

JR: It’s very simple: to legalize —

NG: — I am for a lot of immigration —

JR: — to legalize 11 million undocumented immigrants. That’s what we mean by —

NG: — oh, that’s your definition.

JR: Of course.

NG: There are virtually no — if you go around this country and say to people, “Hi, would you like to legalize 11 million people who crossed the border illegally,” Jorge, you’re never going to get that done.

JR: But you just talked about Ronald Reagan, he did it. He legalized three million undocumented immigrants.

NG: At the time they thought there were 300,000, okay? And it was part of a package, okay? The fact was there was over three million. And that’s part of why you’re not going to get it done in the near future.

JR: But you don’t want to do the same thing that Reagan did.

NG: No, because Reagan wouldn’t have done the same thing Reagan did at this point. You’re not going to get the country to agree to it, you know.

JR: Okay, so —

NG: And here is my point. You’re not going to get —

JR: — well, what would you do —

NG:– you’re not going to get the country to agree to amnesty for 11 million. And Mitt Romney —

JR: — there is not an amnesty.

NG:– and Mitt Romney is not going to get the country to agree to kick out grandmothers and grandfathers. So is there a middle ground? You know, Bush has failed. Obama has failed. And Obama’s broken promises are littered across three years. Now, the question is, can you find the leadership that can, step by step, succeed? For example, I want a dramatically improved legal visa program. Because right now we make it easier to sneak into the U.S. illegally than to apply for a visa to come here as a tourist. And particularly for Florida, the cost to Disney World and the cost to the cruise lines of making it difficult and awkward to get an American visa, it makes no sense. I want to attach an H-1 visa to every person who gets a graduate degree in science and technology, so they automatically, upon graduation, know that they can stay and work in the United States.

JR: That’s not —

NG: Those are the steps. I am for half of the DREAM Act. I am not for the whole DREAM Act, but I am for the part that says if you are in the United States, even if your parents brought you illegally, if you are here, you have the same right to sign up in the military and earn citizenship as you would have had if you —

JR: — is that compassionate with about two million students who came here as children, their parents brought them here —

NG:– an important —

JR:– through no fault of their own?

NG:– right.

JR: And you are saying, you are punishing them. Why?

NG: Why would you regard serving in the U.S. military as punishment?

JR: If they choose to go to college, you are saying no.

NG: They can go to — I haven’t suggested we run around and try to deport them. I have suggested that if they want to become citizens, they can join the military.

JR: Okay. So your plan — who would qualify —

NG: And I, by the way, do not believe it is punishment to ask people to serve the United States military.

JR: They came here when they were babies or five year olds, and you’re telling
them —

NG: I’m just saying so they serve two or three years in the military, and they become citizens.

JR: — you’re not going to go to college.

NG: No, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say ‘deport them.’ I said —

JR: They can’t go to college. They can’t afford it.

NG: They are going to college. That’s your point.

JR: Many of them are not going to college. They simply can’t afford to pay the tuitions for —

NG: Right, and I have advocated that every state pick up the College of the Ozarks, which is a work study college, which you can only go to if you need student aid. It has no student aid, and it has a program where you work. And I think every state ought to have, particularly in its poorest communities, a work study college so that no student will ever be told, ‘You can’t afford it.’

JR: Going back to your immigration plan, who would qualify under your plan to stay legally in the United States, not to be a citizen, but to stay here legally?

NG: Right, people who have lived here and have a family here and are in a position to have an American family sponsor them, I would have it reviewed by a citizen review board at the local level, exactly like the World War II selective service.

JR: For how many years do they have to be living here to — for that?

NG: I think in the 20-25 year range. I mean my first —

JR: Twenty to twenty-five?

NG: Yeah. My first —

JR: — most of the undocumented immigrants?

NG: Yes.

JR: So what will you do with them?

NG: With most of them? I would urge them to get a guest worker permit.

JR: Wait. I mean if you’re saying that they can stay here if they have been living here for more than 20-25 years, right?

NG: Right.

JR: We are actually living with millions and millions of them here in the United States, without any permit, without —

NG: Right, and what I am saying is the ones who are younger, the ones who don’t have family attachment —

JR: You want them to go back?

NG: — could apply for a guest worker permit.

JR: But obviously they would not qualify.

NG: Why not?

JR: What you’re saying is if they have been here for —

NG: I want to go to guest worker system that is driven by the economy. If the economy is growing, which it is not under Obama, but if you got back to four percent economic unemployment, which is where it was when I left the speakership, you would have a pretty robust guest worker program.

JR: But what I was saying is that you are proposing a legalization plan for those who have been here more than 20 years.

NG: Right.

JR: Naturally you are leaving outside the majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants.

NG: Right.

JR: So what will you do with them?

NG: I would urge them to get a guest worker permit.

JR: Which you know they are not going to get it.

NG: Why?

JR: Because the law says otherwise.

NG: No, because we’re writing a new law, Jorge. You and I are sitting here talking about a new law. We can write a law which makes them eligible to apply for the guest worker permit.

JR: All right. Let’s talk about something else.

NG: All right.

JR: And I take full responsibility for this question. When you were Speaker of the House, you criticized President Clinton for having an extramarital affair.

NG: No, I criticized President Clinton for lying under oath in front of a federal judge, committing perjury, which is a felony, for which normal people go to jail.

JR: However, at the same time, you were doing exactly the same thing.

NG: But I wasn’t. I just pointed out. You didn’t hear my answer. I — look, I have been through two divorces. I have been through two divorces.

JR: Many people think that is hypocritical.

NG: That’s right. Because they listen to your question and they don’t listen to the facts. The fact is, I have been through two divorces. I have been deposed both times, under oath. Both times, I told the truth in the deposition because I know that it is — I am not a lawyer, so I know it’s a felony. Bill Clinton, who is a lawyer, is a Yale graduate — law school graduate. He knew he was lying under oath. He knew it was perjury. He knew it was a felony. And in fact, he lost his license to practice law in Arkansas as part of the deal. So —

JR: I understand that and you understand it, but people think that is hypocritical, to criticize President Clinton for doing the same thing that you were doing at the same time.

NG: Okay. There is someplace here where there’s a mental synapse missing. I didn’t do the same thing. I have never lied under oath. I have never committed perjury. I have never been involved in a felony. He was. I mean I had one of his closest friends come to see me, and he said to me, ‘You know, lots of people have done what he did.’ And I said, ‘That’s right, but they didn’t lie under oath about it.’ And the guy looked at me and said, ‘Well, you’re right. That’s a felony, and that’s a real problem.’

JR: One more question about this. Your wife, your ex-wife Marianne said that you proposed to her to have an open marriage, but you blamed the media for posing the question. Isn’t that a fair question about your character?

NG: Sure. And the answer is, it’s not true. We offered several witnesses to ABC who said it was not true. ABC did not want any of the witnesses, but —

JR: You blame the media. You blame the media for —

NG: — I blamed the media for two days —

JR: That is the kind of question that we have to ask, Mr. Gingrich. You know that.

NG: — well, have I blamed you for asking? No. But let me explain. ABC did a one-sided story, wanted no rebuttal, wanted to run it two nights before a primary, and we fought with them for several days over it, and just said, ‘Look, give us equal time.’ Okay? Because it’s a lie; it’s not true. Second, the CNN commentator decided to make it the first question on a national presidential debate. And I thought to myself, ‘We got unemployment. We have immigration. We have Afghanistan. We have the price of energy. We have housing problems. And these guys think this kind of trash ought to be the first question of a national presidential debate?’ And by the way, the audience agreed with me entirely.

JR: Let me ask you about something else. You’re learning Spanish.

NG: Right.

JR: But you have said that Spanish is the language of the living — of living in a ghetto.

NG: It wasn’t about Spanish. I said it about all languages. I am for English as a common, unifying language because everybody — you know, we were just talk about this. Miami-Dade has 94 languages currently being engaged.

JR: You just said something about language spoken by five hundred million people.

NG: What I am saying, in the United States, if you are not conversant in English, your commercial future is limited. The fact is, you will have a higher income, have greater job opportunities and have a likelihood of your family having a better future if you are conversant in English. Now if I were going to live in Mexico, I would say that Spanish would be really important for me to learn. If I were going to live in Brazil, I would say that Portuguese, the Brazilian version of Portuguese, would be really important. The question is, in the United States, if you have 94 languages in Miami-Dade, what is the commercial and governmental language going to be? Well, everybody who could — I think, by the way, most parents know this. Most parents, whatever their linguistic background, want their children to be able to function in English because they know they will get better jobs and have a better future. [Applause.]

JR: So you did not say that Spanish is the language of — in the ghetto? Okay.

NG: Spanish, by the way, is a language of enormous cultural power and goes back all the way through Spanish literature, and goes back all the way through Latin American literature, and obviously is one of the great languages of the world.

JR: All right. We are going to open it up to the audience. And one more question.

NG: Good. I am ready. I mean you’re tough. I like softer questions. [Laughter.]

JR: Would you consider Romney as a running mate? [Laughter.]

NG: I hope you don’t ask him that. I think the idea to Mitt of being vice president on my ticket would be the sort of thing that would drive him back as a recluse into hiding from public life for a while.

JR: All right. Let’s start with the questions. [Continues in Spanish.] Go ahead.

Q: Hello.

NG: Hi.

Q: Hi, Mr. Speaker. My name is Genesa San Guelo [phonetic] from Miami-Dade College. On your website, Newt.org, you propose a system that establishes legality but not citizenship for immigrants with a long set of family and community ties, and I believe that is the language you use. Would you support in-state college tuition for students born in the United States of undocumented parents who, at the moment, pay out of state tuition? And if you do, would you also support in-state tuition for undocumented students that have longstanding ties to this community?

NG: Actually, the — you divide the two. Obviously, for in-state, for students born in the United States, even if they are of undocumented parents, you would want them to have in-state tuition because they were born in the United States, and why would you discriminate against them?

Q: Well, currently — I’m sorry. Currently, what happens is that because of the tax returns, the FASFA does not allow them to be emancipated from their parents. So they need to have their parents’ information and their parents’ legality proven.

NG: Okay. To be honest, I did not know that. That is something I would actively support, separating the student. If you were born in the United States, I would support a modification and we would be glad to work with your experts at the college to make sure that we know how to do it right. I would strongly support the idea that the students’ free standing status as American citizen would, in fact, allow them to get in-state tuition, period. Now again, the states have to make the decision. [Applause.]

I mean the state level decision, but I would urge the states to treat any student actually born in the United States as an American and therefore to be eligible for in-state tuition.

Q: And as for undocumented students? Sorry.

NG: I would actually charge them out-of-state tuition, but I would have allowed them to go to school.

Q: Thank you.

JR: Next question.

Q: This question is from Augusto Vegas from Miami. I’m sure we all agree that President Reagan is an icon of the GOP. Yet, Reagan raised taxes on more than one occasion, gave undocumented workers a path to citizenship through immigration reform, and increased the size of the Federal Government.

Based on your description during Monday’s debate of what conservatism is, Reagan sounds pretty liberal. Was he a moderate? If not, then why not follow this Republican hero’s example?

NG: I do follow his example, which was to be as conservative as possible and on occasion grudgingly give in to the left if there was nothing else to do. There’s a very famous story of Reagan as governor, who had said that there will be no tax increase, that his feet were in concrete, and he finally concluded that he had no choice, because of the scale of the budget problem, and he opened his press conference by saying the sound you are hearing is concrete breaking. You know, Reagan was very, very good at pushing the country as far to the right as he could every morning, but governing. I mean, unlike the current president, he actually got things agreed to. Clinton and I had the same experience, because I had learned from Reagan. If you can get 80 percent of what you want, take it, and come back later for more, but don’t say it’s 100 percent or nothing, because then you get nothing done, and that’s why Reagan – remember, he had Tip O’Neill as speaker. The Democrats controlled the House the entire time he was president. So, there were limits to – to what he could accomplish, but he moved the system far to the right of where Jimmy Carter was taking it.

JR: The next question comes from Shavila Stephan [phonetic].

Q: Hi. I’m Shavila Stephan, and I wanted to ask: according to the report produced by the NCEE Skills of the American Workforce: Tough Choices or Tough Times, America is producing 30,000 less students and engineers compared to India and China. Also, student enrollment has increased from 2 to 18 million students in the past 60 years, but funding has not kept pace. How do you propose making higher education more accessible to maintain America’s competitive advantage when we have cut subsidized student loans and others in Congress proposed cutting the Pell grant?

NG: A couple of things. I mean, first of all, I think we ought to look seriously at the cost of higher education, which actually rivals health care in its continuous increase process. I’m going to look at the scale of bureaucracy that’s now built into higher education, because it makes it more expensive than it should be. I’ll give you an example. Apple has a very bold new idea which basically eliminates textbooks, and you don’t print them. They’re not really expensive. You put them on an electronic device. You reduce the cost for students dramatically, by hundreds of dollars per semester, and, by the way, the science textbooks can be updated in real time, so they’re much more current. So, that would be an — but I’d look — I would look, one, at cutting the cost. Two, I would actually favor something like a national defense education program for science, math, technology, engineering, because I think we have got to dramatically improve the number of people we’re — that we’re graduating. I also would encourage at younger levels that we find ways to stimulate and encourage people getting competent in math and science and engineering. I’m going to give a speech this afternoon at the Space Coast. One of the reasons I favor a very bold space program is to send a signal to young people that science and technology and engineering can be really exciting, that can be really bold, to draw them into it. I favor the same about biology, because I think we’re entering a period of enormous change in biology, and we want a whole generation of new scientists and new experts in the biological field, which also includes computing and electronics and a lot of other pieces. So, I think that’s a very, very important question. I am in favor of Pell grants. In fact, I like Pell grants so much I would have a Pell grant program for K through 12 so that parents have the same right to pick where their children went that they do once they graduate from high school. The other thing I would say is I’d like to radically reduce the bureaucracy. I would — I would dramatically shrink the Department of Education in Washington. I would — I would encourage the state to do the same thing in Tallahassee. I would rather spend the money on teachers in the classroom than on bureaucracies monitoring the teachers in the classroom, and that would give you a lot of money to raise the amount of money available to pay teachers, which I think would be a part of this. [Applause.]

Q: Thank you.

JR: Marc Rodriguez.

Q: Speaker, as a board member of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, I’m proud to be with you today. Given Latin America’s proximity to the United States and the obvious economic and political benefits that a close relationship with Latin America would benefit, could you tell us what could that bring to our great country, and what do you plan to do with that potential opportunity?

NG: It’s really interesting. I first read Milton Eisenhower’s The Wine is Bitter about 1963 in which he talks about our failure to understand the importance of Latin America, and it hasn’t improved. I mean, if you look at the size of the force structure at SOUTHCOM and then you look at the amount of energy and attention we pay to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bahrain, you know, it’s absurd. Latin America is our neighborhood. It’s where Franklin Delano Roosevelt developed the term “good neighbor policy.” We have an enormous interest in Mexico, and we’re not behaving as though it matters to us. We have a tremendous interest economically in all of Latin America. We should have a conscious program to develop Miami has a deliberate process of creating jobs through Latin America and creating jobs in south Florida. I mean, it’s to our natural interest to be one of the places that links together all of Latin America as a conscious goal. We should have a conscious program of advocating prosperity, the rule of law, accountability, transparency for all of Latin America. We should consciously have a program – this goes back to John F. Kennedy. We should consciously have a program that says we want every day Latin Americans to have a better future, not the oligarchies, not the gangs, but normal everyday people. I’m a big fan of Hernando de Soto, who I think really captured in his works in Peru a central understanding of what’s missing and how to have economic development so people can participate and have a better future. I also think, frankly, we want to encourage our businesses to go overseas in an aggressive way. One of the things I’m exploring is to take a fair amount of foreign aid and translate it into a business tax credit, because what I — I mean, I — let me give you an example just very briefly. It really, I think, is agonizing that, even though we have been in and out of Haiti for over 80 years and it’s right off our border, we failed. The people of Haiti have terrible lives today, and all of us should be bothered by this question of, why have we not been able to do better? What is wrong about this? We also, I think, have to take on a huge moral obligation about the drug gangs. I mean, the fact is, an awful lot of MS-13 members get trained in the U.S. and shipped back home, and they are more sophisticated than the police who are trying to deal with them, and that’s an American-based problem. The fact is that the drug cartels are operating in Mexico with American money. I was a very strong supporter of Plan Colombia, and I think it largely worked. We ought to think about an entire plan not just for Mexico but for all of Central America. It’s very important for us not to have Guatemala or El Salvador or Honduras disintegrate under the weight of these kind of gangs.

JR: We have another question — I have it over here Mariana. Actually, if elected president, how willing are you to reach across the aisle and work with the Democrats in creating effective legislation? By the way, I wanted to let you know we will be releasing a poll today that says that if you were to — to run against President Obama, the Hispanic vote would go 70 percent to President Obama and 22 percent to you. You would lose a general election with these numbers.

NG: Sure. And if, at this stage in 1979-1980, you had taken the same poll, Jimmy Carter was beating Ronald Reagan by 30 points. I think, by the time we get to the fall campaign and we talk about values, where the Latino community is far closer to me than they are to Obama, we talk about the failure to create jobs, where the Latino community has a much greater concern than President Obama does, we talk about an effective Latin American policy where he has clearly failed, we talk about Ahmadinejad and the Iranians in alliance with Chavez, where the President has clearly failed, we talk about his failure in Cuba, I have a hunch that, by this fall, we may do better than any Republican except maybe Reagan.

JR: George W. Bush got about 44 percent of the Hispanic vote.

NG: My goal would be to break a majority.

JR: Okay. [Applause.] The last question is Emilio Fontana.

Q: My name is Emilio Fontana, and thank you to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce for inviting me today. I want to know — we talk a lot about Cuba and other places, and we’re sitting next to Mariana, who is from Venezuela, and I’m wondering, what’s your view towards Hugo Chavez and that axis of power that’s been created there and the influence from Iran and China and other countries that seem to be trumping our own hemisphere? How do you plan to deal with that, and what changes do you propose? I heard Obama’s speech yesterday and he mentioned Latin America once from what I remember. So, I want to know what — what you — what you plan to do about these crazy people. Thank you.

NG: Well, Hugo Chavez is the young Fidel. I mean, he is today the energetic center of anti-American activity in Latin America. He is consciously reaching out in violation of the Monroe Doctrine to bring the Iranians into Latin America, and he is a — I think, a very decisive threat to the United States, and we should deal with him accordingly.

It is enormously in our interest that Chavez not survive in power, and I would go back to what I said about Castro. We have to learn to be much more muscular, without – without being military. There are many, many things a great power can do to shape an environment and minimize the ability of a dictator to survive, and I would say to you that I am prepared unequivocally to use American power, in a variety of forms, to strengthen our friends and to be honest about it. People who want to be friendly to the U.S., people who want to trade with us, people who want to have the rule of law – we should help them. People who are our enemies should expect us to try to, in fact, replace them, and Chavez is somebody who is clearly an enemy of the United States, despite the President’s complete misunderstanding of him when they met, which is – if you actually watch the footage of that, is one of the funnier moments of Obama being naïve in the world, because – I mean, Chavez was making fun, and the President didn’t have a clue what he was doing, which is true of so many parts of the world that we don’t have time to get into today.

JR: Señor Gingrich, gracias. Thank you so much. [Applause.]

NG: Gracias.

JR: We know that you didn’t have to do this, and we thank you for coming.

NG: Oh, listen, I’m thrilled to do it. I’m always glad to be back with you.

JR:And we’ll do it in Spanish next time, en español.

NG: You’ll do Spanish, I’ll do English, and then gradually I’ll nibble a little bit into Spanish. [Applause.]

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