Newt Gingrich: Here's the first question I would have asked Biden
Newt Gingrich weighs in on Joe Biden's press conference amid calls to defund the police
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich disclosed on Wednesday what he would ask presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden amid the violent riots taking place across the country.
“The first thing I would ask Biden is, how did he feel about 13 of his staff sending money to Minneapolis to bail out violent looters?” Gingrich said on “Fox & Friends.”
In May, at least 13 members of Biden’s campaign staff made donations to a group that helps Minneapolis protesters get out of jail on bail, Reuters reported.
The staffers posted on Twitter that they contributed money to a group called the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which opposes the practice of making people who are arrested pay money to avoid pre-trial imprisonment.
The campaign would not comment on whether the staffers’ donations were made in coordination with the former vice president’s campaign, according to the report.
Gingrich made the comment one day after Biden held his first formal press conference in nearly three months, drawing mixed reviews.
Gingrich said on Wednesday that Democrats “like criminals and they dislike the police.”
He pointed to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, as a “perfect example.”
“How out of touch with the planet Earth do you have to be to have that kind of behavior going on, to have the sudden spike in murders that jump dramatically from a year ago, and to not figure out maybe you actually need to hire the new additional police?” Gingrich said.
New York City lawmakers voted Tuesday on budget changes that shifted $1 billion from the New York Police Department to programs that assist in youth and community development, a number that fell short of what many protesters in the city have demanded.
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An encampment of protesters have set up outside City Hall since last week to demand the city “defund the police” — a movement demonstrators have been calling for across the country, since the death of George Floyd in police custody in late May.
New York City has experienced a rash of violence recently and an increase in officers retiring from the police department.
The NYPD told Fox News on Saturday that 272 officers had filed for retirement between Floyd's death on May 25 and June 23. That represents a 49 percent increase over the same period in 2019.
Over the weekend police officers responding to a report of shots fired in Manhattan were met with a large crowd throwing bottles and debris at them.
The New York City Police Benevolent Association shared a video that showed the crowd shouting and throwing multiple glass bottles at a police cruiser and tweeted, "this is what a ‘light touch’ looks like,” referencing comments from de Blasio during Floyd protests in May.
Gingrich noted that the NYPD “has senior policemen retiring” and the city is “about to cut off 1,300 rookies and not bring them on.”
“But this is typical,” Gingrich said. “All over this country, whether it's AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] or the mayor of Seattle, or the mayor of New York, Democrats are dedicated to helping criminals and crippling the police and the cost is going to be a dramatic increase in crime and a lot of innocent Americans losing their lives to really bad philosophy.”
Speaking on “The Fox News Rundown” on Wednesday, Gingrich said that “the country understands that the idea of defunding the police makes no sense at all.”
He called de Blasio “the worst mayor in the country” and noted that “he's going to cut the police budget by a billion dollars and not hire 1,300 policemen who were in the pipeline” as the NYPD has reported a staggering increase in shootings and injuries.
“That's just crazy,” Gingrich said.
He went on to say that he believes “the average American” thinks it’s “just madness” when “you look at a week of looting and violence in Minneapolis and then they [Minneapolis City Council members] decide to cancel the police department.”
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“There's no evidence that the average American thinks defunding the police is a rational strategy,” he continued.
Fox News’ Joseph Wulfsohn, Caitlin McFall, Sam Dorman, David Aaro and Dom Calicchio contributed to this report.
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