Newt Gingrich at a closed-door event in February said Donald Trump was not a “conservative” but that the New York businessman had “has found a formula which is worthy of study.”
“This is not a guy who’s shallow or simple, but he is a guy who knows an immense amount about marketing, which is why he talks at a fourth-grade level. He talks at the lowest level of any candidate in either party, not because he’s stupid,” the former Speaker of the House said at to the Republican State Leadership Committee in Washington according to audio obtained by ProPublica. “He does it because he knows if you talk at a fourth-grade level everybody can understand you.”
Gingrich told attendees that he doesn’t know how Trump would transition from the campaign trail to the White House. “I do not believe anybody including Trump can tell you what a Trump presidency would be like because he won’t know.”
He went on to say, “How we make the transition from you know, language for fourth graders to real policy, I don’t know.”
“He has somehow figured out some weird combination of the Kardashians. I mean, think about it, the whole tweeting, the whole continuous noise,” Gingrich said. The now-Trump supporter said The Donald “has found a formula which is worthy of study. I operate on the premise that when people are doing something really smart, even if I don’t like it or I don’t understand it, it’s my job to figure them out, not their job to figure me out.”
Gingrich referred to National Review’s strong anti-Trump stance by saying they’re “right” and “Donald Trump’s not a conservative.”
He did though tell attendees that Trump could win if he followed Ronald Reagan’s inspirational campaign style as opposed to Goldwater’s off-the-cuff campaign.
The former House Speaker said, “If he and his team understand this, I suspect they will evolve rapidly.”