On Sunday, former Congressman Newt Gingrich went on Fox News (of course) to suggest that members of the bipartisan committee investigating the January 6 insurrection might be jailed if Republicans take back Congress.
Gingrich even likened the January 6 investigators — not the violent seditionists who stormed the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” — to a lynch mob (in flagrant disregard for the actual and heinous history of lynching in America).
- Gingrich, you may recall, resigned from Congress in disgrace 23 years ago.
- Numerous political scientists point to Gingrich’s tenure as Speaker of the House as the beginning of an abandonment of democratic norms and an embrace of hyper-partisanship that now form the core political “strategy” of the Republican Party.
- Without Newt Gingrich, we may well have been spared the likes of Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Donald Trump in the White House.
- Gingrich was an early supporter of Trump’s candidacy, and he has kept himself in the spotlight by being one of Trump’s most sycophantic lackeys in spreading the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
Does it matter when a painfully attention-starved egomaniac like Newt Gingrich spouts off like this?
When a former Speaker of the House aims to intimidate sitting members of Congress and urges the weaponization of criminal law against political adversaries, you bet it matters.
That we’ve heard this kind of language from Donald Trump doesn’t mean it’s inconsequential for others to echo it. To the contrary, it makes it more dangerous.
As Representative Liz Cheney (a Republican) said in response to Gingrich:
“This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.”
Send a message to Newt Gingrich:
No matter how desperate you are for Donald Trump’s attention, we will not tolerate you threatening the bipartisan congressional committee investigating what happened when a violent, seditionist mob spurred by Trump overran the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn a legitimate election. We see you for exactly what you are — concerned, as always, for nobody and nothing but yourself.
Add your name now.
Thank you for taking action.
For democracy,
- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
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