Newt Gingrich talks Gallagher case, impeachment inquiry, Bloomberg and Thanksgiving
Former House speaker and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich reacts to the Navy secretary's firing over the Eddie Gallagher case and more on 'Fox & Friends.'
House Democrats are looking for a way out of the Trump impeachment inquiry without having an official vote because they know they can't remove him from office, Newt Gingrich said Tuesday on "Fox & Friends."
"The person who hung them out to dry is Adam Schiff," he said. "I think Schiff was so dishonest, so blatantly arrogant, so patently unfair that he turned — that he personally turned the tide. And if you look, for example, among independents, there's been a huge swing from the independents saying 'yeah, maybe we should impeach' to independents increasingly saying 'no, we shouldn’t.'"
"It was a Michigan Democrat yesterday who has switched her position and said, 'you know, maybe we don’t need to impeach,'" Gingrich added. "'Maybe we can just vote censure.' I think more and more Democrats are going to come back."
Gingrich was referring to Michigan Democratic Rep. Brenda Lawrence, who previously supported the impeachment inquiry into Trump, but then announced on Sunday that a prolonged impeachment fight would harm the country.
"We are so close to an election," Lawrence said Sunday on a Michigan radio program. "I will tell you, sitting here knowing how divided this country is, I don't see the value of taking him out of office. But I do see the value of putting down a marker saying his behavior is not acceptable."
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Lawrence continued: "I want him censured. I want it on the record that the House of Representatives did their job and they told this president and any president coming behind him that this is unacceptable behavior and, under our Constitution, we will not allow it. ... I am a Democrat, but I am an independent United States of America citizen."
Fifty percent of independents questioned in an NPR/PBS/Marist poll conducted between Nov. 11-15, did not support impeaching and removing Trump from office, with just 42 percent backing removal. That represents a slight drop, compared with the previous NPR/PBS/Marist poll – taken during the first week in October – when support was at 45 percent.
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"For most Americans, this impeachment stuff is Washington junk," Gingrich added. "It never reached the level of being real. They think it’s just politicians yammering at each other. And the big loser here has been the news media where over half the country now believes that the news media is simply on the side of the Democrats, and has nothing to do with the news anymore because they're a propaganda arm."
Fox News' Greg Re and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report