Newt Gingrich: Youngkin Knew When To “Dance” With Trump & When It Was Not An Advantage

On Fox Across America with Jimmy Failla, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich discussed his new book Beyond Biden and what effect former President Trump had on the Virginia race for governor.

“Youngkin is not like an anti-Trump or a never-Trumper. And when he ran for the nomination, he was very positive about Trump, which you could tell if you look Terry McAuliffe’s ads, because they kept showing Youngkin saying good things about Trump. So Youngkin is a smart enough guy that he understood that you could not alienate the most powerful and popular person in the Republican Party and expect to win. On the other hand, he also understood that in the suburbs of northern Virginia, where all the bureaucrats live, were being the Trump candidate is not an advantage. Trump has been mature enough about this, that he basically danced with Youngkin and they worked it together, and Trump sent the signals that were necessary to the places that needed to get him. But he didn’t go out and he didn’t come in and campaign. He didn’t give McAuliffe the kind of target that McAuliffe desperately wanted. And the result was, I think that Youngkin was able to clear the deck get away from national issues. And this will be a great study in national versus state issues because Youngkin ran a campaign that was about Virginia and it was a solution oriented, better future, a better life, practical solutions kind of campaign while McAuliffe was running a very political campaign, talking about January 6th and talking about Donald Trump. Well, the average Virginian didn’t think this was a Senate race. He thought it was a governor’s race, and they thought what mattered was, what are you going to do for Virginia? And the truth was that McAuliffe didn’t have a good answer.”