Understanding Trump

by Newt Gingrich

  • Brain science will have revolutionized our understanding of autism, depression, Down syndrome, and dozens of other brain activities.

  • Prescribers will be able to look at a patient with osteoarthritis, a disease affecting more than 30 million in the US, and offer medication that stops or reverses damage, whereas today they can only provide relief of mild symptoms.

  • We will have landed on Mars and established a permanent base.

  • We will have manufactured the first large spaceships on the moon with robotics and 3-D printing.

  • The first asteroid mining systems will have generated huge profits.

  • Virtually every third-grader will have the ability to read and write.

  • Chicago and other dangerous cities will have experienced a dramatic decline in violence.

  • Jobs will have proliferated in rural, small towns and in poor urban neighborhoods.

  • Every adult will have access to job training, and the middle class will have grown.

  • The military will have streamlined red tape and procurement, so we get far more combat power per dollar.

  • Those dollars will have been invested in new twenty-first-century capabilities, so we once again have an unchallengeable military advantage.

  • Islamic supremacists will have been destroyed everywhere. The radical Islamist movement will have been reduced to scattered remnants living in hiding.

  • Post-Putin Russia will have decided to become normal and join Western countries.

  • China will have decided that a revitalized America can’t be defeated and is operating collaboratively with the United States.

  These are the kind of breakthroughs a successful Trump administration could develop.

  This is the path that would make America great again.

  Following are a collection of essays and speeches that I found useful in Understanding Trump.

  A young Donald J. Trump with his siblings.

  Donald Trump stands with his parents, Fred and Mary Anne Trump, at his graduation from New York Military Academy.

  Donald Trump with his father following his graduation from The Wharton School. (Photos from the Trump family collection)

  Donald Trump and his father, Fred Trump, survey the city skyline. (Courtesy of the Trump family collection)

  President Ronald Reagan shakes hands with Donald Trump at a reception for members of the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies in the Blue Room on November 3, 1987. (Courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Library)

  I was honored to join Trump at a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio in July 2016. (Getty Images)

  I enjoyed talking with Eric Trump in the green room at the same Cincinnatirally. (Courtesy of Eric Trump)

  Donald Trump points to a supporter in the crowd at a campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. (Courtesy of the Trump Presidential Campaign)

  Donald Trump interacts with supporters at a campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina.

  Donald Trump is greeted by vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, family, and friends as he arrives on his helicopter at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photos courtesy of the Trump Presidential Campaign)

  The Trump family takes the stage at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on July 21, 2016. (Getty Images)

  Donald Trump shakes hands with vice presidential nominee Mike Pence. (Courtesy of the Trump Presidential Campaign)

  Callista and I were honored to be greeted by Candidate Trump in the green room prior to our remarks at the Republican National Convention. (Courtesy of Callista Gingrich)

  President Trump takes the oath of office on January 20, 2017 with First Lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, by his side. (Getty Images)

  Following his election in November 2016, Callista and I were honored to join President-Elect Trump at Trump Tower in New York City. (Courtesy of Jared Kushner)

  President Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint press conference at the White House on February 15, 2017. (Official White House Photo)

  President Trump shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 13, 2017. (Official White House Photo)

  President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on February 28, 2017.

  I had the privilege of meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office in March 2017. (Official White House Photos)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Understanding Trump has been a fascinating book to think through and write.

  Without President Trump’s generous willingness to talk about issues and policies, first as a candidate and then as president-elect and president, this book would have been implausible. As I listened to Trump and watched him make decisions, I really began to understand his principles and patterns. I’d like to thank President Trump for his leadership, and for the many enlightening conversations we’ve shared.

  Similarly, I want to acknowledge and thank Don Jr., Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany, and Barron for their openness and willingness to be a part of their father’s campaign and presidency. My understanding of what a strong and caring father Trump is came directly from his children. I also want to thank Melania for all she has personally done to bring beauty and grace to the White House. She is clearly in the Jackie Kennedy tradition and a first lady of whom we can all be proud.

  Jared Kushner’s openness in the campaign and since has been tremendously helpful. He is remarkably focused, practical, and committed to getting real work done.

  On every occasion, Rhona Graff, Trump’s remarkable senior vice president, has been extremely helpful. I would also like to thank Meredith McIver from the Trump Organization for her assistance.

  There have been several close friends on both the campaign team and White House staff who have helped me better understand how the Trump system works. Corey Lewandowski was a real leader of the early campaign. He implemented Trump’s design and got an amazing amount done. Paul Manafort was easy to work with and did a great job at the Republican convention. The team of Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and David Bossie provided extra punch and energy when it was desperately needed. Brad Parscale did a great job with data and social media and was one of the hidden strengths of the campaign.

  Stephen Miller may have been the most heroic figure in the campaign other than Trump himself. Day after day, Stephen sat a few feet behind Trump on the airplane writing speech after speech. He is the philosopher-writer of the Trump team and continues in this role at the White House.

  Despite the Trump campaign’s heroic efforts, victory could not have been achieved without Reince Priebus’s six years of hard work as the chairman of the Republican National Committee. With Mike Shields, Katie Walsh, and Sean Spicer, Reince built the largest party machine in Republican history. In October 2016 he had 8,500 paid staff providing organizational muscle to turn out voters on election day.

  Joe Gaylord was my partner in our sixteen-year effort to grow the first House Republican majority in forty years. He applied these experiences to help me understand the Trump phenomenon.

  Barry Casselman was the first to point out that real change was coming to the upper Midwest and that Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were in play. Salena Zito was similarly perceptive about the shift in western Pennsylvania.

  Sean Hannity was both Trump’s biggest booster and his most perceptive critic. Again and again he helped me understand what was happening in the campaign and what it meant.

  Rayna Casey, a close friend and supporter, was the first person to bring the importance of Wollman Rink to my attention. As a businesswoman, she really understood Trump’s skill as an entrepreneur in politics.

  Vince Haley, then at Gingrich Productions and now writing in the White House, was the other person who very early on said, “This is a really smart guy who is doing something unique.” Vince had lived through Dave Brat’s stunning defeat of Eric Cantor and has a real sense of the underlying power of grassroots populism.

  Vince, a
nd his partner in writing, Ross Worthington, volunteered to work with Stephen Miller throughout the fall campaign and somehow never made it back to Gingrich Productions. They are energetically ensconced in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, writing seven days a week.

  Randy Evans, my adviser, friend, and supporter since 1976, was helpful throughout the two-year campaign. As Georgia Republican National Committeeman, he was intimately involved in the convention and in making sure that Trump won the majority of delegates. His strategic advice was remarkably helpful, and the concept of a book called Understanding Trump came from him.

  My two daughters, Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Cushman, have grown up in politics and are very perceptive observers of the process. We had a running dialogue about the nomination and election process, and it has continued through the transition and the presidency.

  Kate Hartson at Hachette has become a good friend and fellow enthusiast, and she is a great editor. This is our fifth book together, and it is a joy to work with her and the Hachette team.

  Joe DeSantis and Louie Brogdon have been my primary collaborators in thinking through and writing Understanding Trump. They started with my eight speeches on Trump at the Heritage Foundation and my speech on Trump at the National Defense University, and developed the first draft of the book. They have been great partners.

  Ed Feulner, the founder of the Heritage Foundation, and Jim DeMint, its current leader, have both been helpful in allowing me to develop my thoughts in a series of lectures at Heritage.

  Finally, all of this has been made possible through the support of our outstanding team at Gingrich Productions. Callista has driven the overall system as president. Her enthusiastic participation and encouragement have made this project fun and fulfilling. Bess Kelly has been our indispensable chief coordinator and implementer. Woody Hales has managed our very complex schedule. Christina Maruna has overseen our two million Twitter followers and 985,000 Facebook followers. John Hines has helped keep a variety of projects moving forward. Audrey Bird has executed our product marketing. And Taylor Swindle has reviewed and administered our contracts and finances. Together they have been a remarkable team.

  APPENDIX I

  THE INTELLECTUAL YET IDIOT

  From Skin in the Game

  by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy League, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

  But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligentsia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities—but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

  Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They can’t tell science from scientism—in fact in their image-oriented minds scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass Sunstein–Richard Thaler types—those who want to “nudge” us into some behavior—much of what they would classify as “rational” or “irrational” (or some such categories indicating deviation from a desired or prescribed protocol) comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models. They are also prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule.

  The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid-twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the government’s role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP). The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and is rarely seen outside specialized outlets, think tanks, the media, and universities—most people have proper jobs and there are not many openings for the IYI.

  Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite. He fails to naturally detect sophistry.

  The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated.” What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences. While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools and PhDs as these are needed in the club.

  More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver (again, no real skin in the game as the concept is foreign to the IYI). Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair. The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on YouTube. Not only did he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesn’t do so is mentally ill.

  The IYI has a copy of the first hardback edition of The Black Swan on his shelves, but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence. He believes that GMOs are “science,” that the “technology” is not different from conventional breeding as a result of his readiness to confuse science with scientism.

  Typically, the IYI get the first-order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects, making him totally incompetent in complex domains. In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator,” not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).

  The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, election forecasting models, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.

  The IYI is member of a club to get traveling privileges; if social scientist he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the UK, he goes to literary festivals; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed; he takes statins because his doctor told him to do so; he fails to understand ergodicity and when explained to him, he forgets about it soon later; he doesn’t use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with some
one who knows the Queen; he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshott, John Gray, Ammianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph de Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drank to the point when one starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesn’t even know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba (which in Brooklynese is “can’t tell sh**t from shinola”); he doesn’t know that there is no difference between “pseudointellectual” and “intellectual” in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past five years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics.

  He knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation.

  But a much easier marker: he doesn’t even deadlift.

  Postscript—From the reactions to this piece, I discovered that the IYI has difficulty, when reading, in differentiating between the satirical and the literal.

  Post-Postscript—The IYI thinks this criticism of IYIs means “everybody is an idiot,” not realizing that their group represents, as we said, a tiny minority—but they don’t like their sense of entitlement to be challenged and although they treat the rest of humans as inferiors, they don’t like it when the waterhose is turned to the opposite direction (what the French call arroseur arrosé). (For instance, Richard Thaler, partner of the dangerous GMO advocate Übernudger Cass Sunstein, interpreted this piece as saying that “there are not many non-idiots not called Taleb,” not realizing that people like him are < 1% or even .1% of the population.)