By Newt Gingrich | FOX News
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from the new eBook “Electing Trump: Newt Gingrich on the 2016 Election.”
One morning in late January of 2015, Callista and I woke up at the Marriott in Des Moines, Iowa, a hotel where we had spent many nights over the years. This time, we were in town for the Iowa Freedom Summit, the first big event of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. I’d been asked to attend by our friend Dave Bossie, who helped organized the Summit and invited me to speak even though I wasn’t planning to run for president myself.
Sometime that morning, the phone in our hotel room rang. On the other end was Donald Trump. He invited us to meet him for breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
At the time, the media and the Washington political establishment gave almost no thought to Donald Trump. They were certain he wouldn’t enter the race–that his hints about running for president were only a ploy to get attention. As a result, they determinedly ignored him.
Callista and I left breakfast that morning convinced that Trump would run.
For over an hour, he peppered us with questions about how to run for president. It was clear that he was serious. And we took him seriously.
The media and the political establishment didn’t take Donald Trump seriously when he announced his campaign the following June. They didn’t take him seriously when he sped to the top of the polls. They didn’t take him seriously when almost every indicator on social media showed he won the first debate. And as their shock on election night proved, many didn’t take him seriously right up until the moment he won the election.
What didn’t they understand?
The signs of the American people’s discontent were there from the beginning.
After the American people voted for real change in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2014, things had gotten worse, not better.
Fifteen years into the 21st century, Americans had suffered through 9/11, two wars without victory, a housing bubble, a financial crisis, a Wall Street bailout, a failed stimulus, a weak recovery, a health care law passed over the strong objections of the public, its disastrous implementation, a lawless administration, and a media elite that was increasingly disdainful of ordinary Americans.
By mid-2015, it had been more than a year since … >>> Continue Reading at FOX News
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