President Donald Trump needs to recognize he made a good step hiring retired Gen. John Kelly as his chief of staff, but he also needs to know what is and what is not working with his presidency, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday.
"He's isolated, and on the Hill, he has far more people willing to sit to one side and not help him right now," Gingrich told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program.
"He needs to know what doesn't work. You don't have a 30 percent approval rating and have people shooting at you, and conclude it was fine."
If Trump wants to see his agenda enabled and "have a presidency that is stable," he'll need to make some serious changes, said Gingrich, suggesting that the president read his own 1990 book, "The Art of the Comeback."
"It is a fascinating book and a helpful reminder," Gingrich said. "He needs to think of what is not working and what he will do that is more effective in the rest of the presidency."
Gingrich also criticized chief strategist Steve Bannon, following interviews the former Breitbart News owner gave this week, including calling alt-right groups a collection of clowns.
"They are not clowns," Gingrich said. "You have someone around attacking Jews and black Americans and thinking that the Ku Klux Klan is okay, those things are dangerous and lead to hatred that we saw in Nazi Germany and lead to slavery in America in the past. This is a great split in the country."
For most Americans, Gingrich continued, it is a "moral issue" to condemn neo-Nazis and the KKK, and Trump has been "better than the news media gives him credit for."
Gingrich pointed out that Trump repudiated former KKK leader David Duke during his campaign, and had said that "you can't be a patriotic American and a racist."
However, the country "yearns for someone who is clear on what is evil or unacceptable," said Gingrich. "In Charlottesville, you had to repudiate neo-Nazis."
Gingrich also criticized Bannon for his comments in one of the interviews that there is "no military solution" to North Korea.
"I think for Steve to make the comment in the Oval Office is good, in a senior leadership meeting is good," Gingrich said. "But with the president being tough with North Korea and the secretary offense, and national security adviser, and United Nations ambassador being tough with North Korea, it sends a strange signal to Kim Jong-un to have a major figure in the White House undercut everything that the national security team is doing."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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