to develop a vaccine that protects against the coronavirus. and greg for are a, president and ceo of the national grocers association i how the nation's food retailers are coping with the huge surge in demand and increasingly strict social distancing. join the conversation monday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. do it. host: thanks for the call. caller: joint host: joining us from rome is the former speaker of the house, newt gingrich. guest: it is great to be back with you and it makes me feel like i am back at home when i can be on washington journal with you. host: you are in italy, your wife serving as the ambassador to the vatican. are there lessons from italy we can apply to the u.s. as we begin the process of restarting our economy? guest: the italian expense was unusual in that there are one how to thousand chinese -- in

that there are 100,000 chinese working in northern italy. and unlike president trump, the italian government was politically correct and kept ,pen flights from china bringing in a substantial number of people who are carrying the disease. so italy was in worse shape than new york city. all of this was in northern italy. they felt the only way they could stop it was to stop the entire country. for the last seven weeks we have been staying at home. a few runs to the embassy virtually. is verywhole situation different than you might expect. they are beginning to gain ground. daysonsecutive gays -- there has been a slight drop each day in the number of intensive care units.

next two or three weeks macy italy open up. they went through a cycle where the only things you could do store oro to a grocery a pharmacy or a gas station. and if you were on the street without permission, they could fine you $3200. so they took it very seriously. i think they are close to turning the corner. one thing americans have to think about, a lot of people believe there will be a second round of the virus coming sometime in the fall. we can't go through a second round of shutting everything down. i think we have got to have a much more aggressive approach that looks at containment, whether it is mitigation that includes testing, identifying and tracing contacts.

the things that you should do. i think the president did the right thing in turning over authority to the governors. friday, pointing out the montana zoo just reopened in billings, a town of 109,000. you would not want to open the central park zoo. you have to recognize how different, how diverse america is. in italy, most of the virus has been in the north. the further south you go, the less virus there has been. the italians are going to start moving toward opening up probably one region at a time as they look at the places where the virus is currently no longer a threat. host: wasn't the first interview we did with you with brian lamb, was that the atlanta zoo? guest: you have a great

[laughter] that was one of my favorite all-time interviews. we were in front of the tiger cage at the atlanta zoo. brian wanted to pick a place that reflected where i am, i love animals. i go to the zoo here in rome when it is open. ,i love animals and fossils and dinosaurs and the natural world. i have always treasured brian's sensitivity, thinking how are we going to show off the new speaker of the house in a unique way? that was great fun. host: you represented georgia. governor kemp is getting heat including from the president saying he is reopening too soon. guest: i think we're going to find out.

i think what pushed governor kemp was the number of very small barbershops and beauty shops, etc. where people are at the edge of their rope. there were a number of people saying i could not hold out for six or nine weeks. then it becomes a question of , can you follow the right procedures? we had a little bit of that here. i had a dental emergency and had to go to an italian dentist. they had taken complete preparations. she was wearing an entire gown. she has something on her head. dentists are some of the most endangered people because they get in people's mouths. and the potential for them to spew the virus at you. they were very professional.

the question is going to be, how do you run a barbershop with minimal risk? how do you run a beauty salon with minimal risk? and working our way out and a variety of ways. some of the restrictions i think are nonsensical and that i think about one fourth of all the counties in the u.s., about 3000 counties, about one fourth of them do not have any virus. so why would you apply the strictness of new york city to a rural county of georgia that is virus free at the moment? host: your new book is "shakedown." and i think this is number 40 or heavy surpassed 40, mr. speaker? guest: it depends on if you keep track on all the books.

we signed an agreement for an earlier book that was wild. shakedown is for people who are worried about the virus. it is an adventure story in which the russians and iranians get together to try to set off a nuclear weapon. underwater, off of baltimore and washington. at the end the project, which , the government tried in world war ii to develop with japan. the soviets tried to use that in the cold war. we have two american heroes. valerie mayberry, and fbi agent, and garrett, navy seal. their job is to try to stop this from happening. the iranian general is based on solemani who we killed a couple of months ago in iraq.

there are a lot of parallels between this iranian general's attitude and his. if you want something different and want something to entertain you and stretch your awareness of what is possible, i think "shakedown" is a good book. i am delighted to work with peter, we are proud of it. host: are you worried about the president's instructions to take down any iranian gunboats harassing vessels? is this escalating the situation between the u.s. and iran? i do not think we are escalating the situation, if we say you cannot enter the safety zone of an american warship about consequence. what you can't do is run the risk, as we had happen with the

destroyer cole in yemen, one of those gunboats getting loaded with explosives and coming next to an american warship and blowing a hole in it. there are ground rules for how ships engage with each other. what we are saying to the iranians, if we think you are putting an american worship and harm's way, we are going to eliminate you. -- american warship. given the iranian navy has no chance, i think that is a good response to a dictatorship that has been targeting americans. we talk too little over the past 20 years about how steadily iranians want to kill americans. host: when you walk the streets of rome, what do you see?

guest: i do not walk the streets because i would be fined $3200. the state department has instructed us that if we are dumb enough to get fined, we would have to pay out of her own pocket. my wife goes to the embassy. she do certain things, classified documents, that she cannot read at home. is amazingly empty compared to normal. ago, the pope walking up and empty street. it gave you the sense of how vacant the city has become. it has become much cleaner, but this is a city that has relied on tourism for a large part of its economy. last year they had 23,000 people every day at the coliseum. this year, zero. imagine the economic damage they have suffered in order to defeat this particular virus.

host: are you able to get fresh air? can you go outside? guest: we can you outside. we have a yard. that is helpful. one of the great things about rome is spring is lovely. it was about 70 degrees today. it is sunny. in a lot of ways, rome is everything you saw in the movies. if you have to be locked down, there are worse places to be locked down than rome. host: two other points and then we'll get to our viewer phone calls. the idea of remote voting in the house of representatives. there is now a bipartisan panel looking at that idea. what is your view? guest: i think it is a terrible idea. legislating bodies learn from each other. you bring the other 435 house

members and 100 senators who come from different states, differ backgrounds at different experiences. interacting,s of their collective late smarter than anyone of them. if we start isolating folks and all they do is vote, we will increase the occurrence of the -- increase the ignorance of the legislative process by an enormous amount. as an historian, i think it would be destructive. you know, i used to be speaker of the house. i spent 20 years in the house. we are replaceable. the idea we are too precious to take a risk, we ask medical doctors and nurses to take risk. we ask people at the grocery store to take a risk, but somehow these elected officials are too precious? no. everyone one of them is replaceable. they ought to get over this idea that the new aristocracy, the princes and princesses of the american system is baloney.

wear masks if you need to. socially space if you need to. but, get your tail back to washington and do your job. or resign and go home. host: i want to ask you about the comments the president made, late last week. he then walked them back saying he was only being sarcastic. this is from foxnews, a spike in poison control calls after the president's comments. was it a mistake to publicly muse about the idea of using disinfectant to wipe out the virus? guest: sure. it was a mistake to publicly muse and suggests that you would ingest it. say ifnot a mistake to you apply it to a tabletop, it will kill the virus faster than the virus of killed otherwise. but, the president is learning something i learned as speaker.

, andu have press events you have a hostile press and allow them to pick, the people did not cover the live event. their wait and cover one sentence and after a long. --dr. along portion of talk and after a long talk, they take that one sentence and give it the worst possible interpretation. then they use that to attack the president. my advice to the president is shorter events. tell the american people what they need to hear from the commander-in-chief. enemieset your mortal have a shot at you every single day. these are not your friends. they are partisan left-wingers who hate you. every chance they get, they will distort what you say. host: with all the respect, why not just say it was a mistake. why did he have to say he was being sarcastic when the briefing was focused on the pandemic? guest: beats me.

i am not inside his head. host: let's go to david indianapolis with newt gingrich. who is joining us from rome. caller: good morning. it is a pleasure to be on your show. former speaker gingrich, i have a question about your sighting -- citing of an example of italy as an example of what did not happen correct. wouldn't that put you in a position of fighting the u.s. administration for its inability to get this right? that this has caused more deaths than there should have happened had we taken control earlier. if i could pose a quick question, if president trump is spouting information that is misinformation -- i can't under

any circumstance understand why you, or any other republican would be an apologist for what he has done. i agree that you just said it was wrong, but the fact of the matter is that he did it. now, people are being made ill by it. does that not represent the idea that we need to get him off of of anything and let the doctors tell us what is going on? host: thank you, david. we will get a response. guest: let me work backwards. no, i do not think, when you are dealing with the economy, national security, the virus, all of the different things, i don't think you can just leave it up to doctors. doctors have a specialty in one thing. they don't have a specialty in economics. they don't have a specialty in keeping america safe.

the job of any president whether it is barack obama or donald trump is to represent the entire nation and to integrate a lot of concerns. reopening the economy is a judgment question. the swedes followed one pattern, the italians followed a different pattern, there was enormous damage done to their economy and i think the president is going to weigh the balance of which of those two -- where are we on that track? in terms of the early stages, i do a weekly podcast. in early february, i had dr. fauci -- he came on and did a podcast, which is available, you can pull it up.

in february, dr. fauci was not particularly terrified. why? the chinese lied. we were relying on information which turned out to be false. the president reacted earlier than most people would have, he cut off flights to china. him and said it was racist and unnecessary. you look back now and you realize that it probably saved a lot of lives. if the italians had done that, they would have had less disease. where the president may have been too slow was cutting off flights from europe. the virus was coming through europe. there was nobody in the early days who would have supported the idea of cutting off flights from europe.

if we had known early enough. the university of southhampton did a study, they estimated that if the chinese had told the truth, 95 percent of the people worldwide who died would be alive. this effort to cite this as donald trump's fault is a misreading of history. dr. fauci is a brilliant man and i have a norma's respect for him. february, the best information from the chinese and the world health organization said this would be like sars. we were all wrong and we were wrong because of the chinese. host: did they withhold the information, or did they not know? guest: they lied. period. there was a timeline done by the hudson institute where i called

for making the chinese pay for reparations. timeline,ook at the the first case is in mid-november -- they started getting cases in wuhan and doctors said this is serious, they were locked up. the chinese government issued instructions that the only positive reports -- nobody should be fear mongering. the doctors who reported were charged with a misdemeanor, had to apologize for having said inappropriate things. two weeks later, died from the virus. the chinese then lied about it. they lied to the who, who believed them, as late as january they said there was no evidence of human to human transmission, even though they knew that was a falsehood. they were already dealing with

an epidemic in wuhan and was threatening to go worldwide as a pandemic. they were allowing flights from wuhan to the rest the world after they knew it was a pandemic. the chinese have a great deal to answer for in this. host: ron is in arlington. caller: good morning steve and morning newt gingrich. i'm not sure where to begin but i would like a few minutes to counter some of what mr. gingrich is saying. i believe first, either he is a historian, a previous speaker of the house, and i hate to say, maybe a shill of the republican party. he talks about that we restricted travel, the president restricted travel. however it is documented that 40,000 people from china still entered the united states as tourists or business people. coming into america. then, he talks about the 100,000 chinese working in italy, which is true.

but, he doesn't talk about -- it's obvious that europe has the disease. he said italy locks down its country and did the right thing and fines violators for walking the streets. but then, he says potus did the right thing by giving control to the governors. that will prolong the but destruction of our economy. that well. then, he says the right thing to do is containment, not mitigation. through all of this, if we do not have testing, contact tracing, and containment, which means people who were either positive or were close to people who are positive must quarantine voluntarily. host: ron, inc. you for the question and the comments. -- ron, thank you. guest: i am not sure where he

was going. [laughter]the italians went into lockdown because they had lost control. i have not suggested that new york overreacted. when you have a city that densely crowded, i think new york had to go to lockdown. the difference is, if you take a map overlay, the united states is the size of europe. to suggest that montana or south dakota should follow the same rules as new york i think is a misunderstanding. my argument is, the president was right to say we have 50 governors, and the governors should try to work their own way out. make it through, and learn from each other. some people are going to make mistakes and we will find out in the next few weeks. other people are going to do smart things. what we learned to do the smart

things and learn not to do the dumb things? i do not think there is a theoretical solution, and i do not think we need some magic proposal. we need to move forward with the economy and containing the disease. host: the speaker's newest book is titled "shakedown" available on amazon. how do you launch a book in the middle of a pandemic? guest: [laughter] it is difficult. it has been quite an experience. of course, you can't go to bookstores. you cannot do the things one would normally do. mostly, i have done it by radio and television. as i am talking with you on

zoom, and i ended up doing the view. the backdrop is my dining room, which is also my workshop and my tv studio. it is a challenge because i think initially, we were told that "shakedown" came out at the very moment people were so frozen by the virus, but we are watching it build momentum as word-of-mouth builds. host: we have not had a chance to have you on since the last state of the union address, which seems so long ago. but it was two months ago. you sat behind bill clinton for four state of the union addresses, next to al gore. when you saw speaker pelosi rip up president trump's speech, the most recent state of the union address. what was your reaction? guest: i just realized, i want to reassure everybody i have not had my haircut in several weeks.

so looks long, that is why. i was astonished on a couple of levels. the state of the union is a constitutional event. a report to congress is called for in the constitution. it is, to me, remarkable she would be that hostile in that setting. two, i think it is the opposite of what she would want. we have seen the same thing from speaker pelosi again and again. in these negotiations i think , people are frightened. i think they want a joint effort to get america back on track. when she holds up bills for two weeks and prevents businesses from getting help, it is the kind of partisanship which i suspect is not to her advantage.

that i could not imagine doing night i could not imagine doing that. , even though we fought, as you know, and even went through an impeachment, president clinton and i always had a relationship that was very practical. and the ability to work with one another. arm ever one stated the union he came in. and you'll notice the president always gives the speaker of the house and the vice president it was there he always gives each , of them a copy of the speech. clinton wandered in and hands me this envelope. i open it, and it says, from president william jefferson to speaker newt gingrich. he said i'm sorry, i gave you the wrong thing. gore and i were laughing. this is a human business.

sometimes people have to be human amazing how much more you can get done, and to have , somebody tear your speech up during a national event makes it harder to sit down together and get something done. host: kyle is next in ellicott city, maryland. caller: it is interesting. the last i have seen so many point. presidents come through, i have never seen a president like this president be so divisive. newt gingrich would know. donald trump, we thought he was a businessman, he could bring together. he has been the opposite in so many ways. in the way he talks about people. the way he talks about the country. how divisive he is. it is not about his policies. a lot of them are fine. i think it is the way he handles himself.

the way he talks. you i have never seen more should see between friends. i have never seen more friends not friends anymore because of this man. another quick point, newt gingrich and the conservatives attack the media so much, it concerns me long-term that way -- that when we need to media to communicate critical messages they undermine one of the , foundations of this country which is having a good media. every network has good ones and bad ones we can go through and figure that stuff out. but the idea that the media is the evil person, the enemy of the country, which newt played into, which donald trump says, i think it is dangerous for the country. i think folks who are as smart as newt should stop this and say, do your research, do your homework, but don't attack every media source as if they are the enemy of the state. host: thank you. we will get a response. guest: i won't say they are evil

but i will say that overwhelmingly the media is on the anti-trump team. they wake up in the morning and you look at the near times. they no-trump has done something terrible, they just do not know what it is yet. i think the first article suggesting trump be impeached was in april of 2016, during the campaign. the day he is inaugurated the , washington post has an article on the plan moving forward for impeachment. the level of hostility which i think occurred in part because nobody thought he would win. at about 8:00 on election night, they were breaking out the champagne. and hillary was going to win. two hours later, the unthinkable happened. i think they never recovered from that and that includes most reporters.

i think that is an objective thing. i have a good friend who is an historian on the civil war who called me and said he had not seen such unending hostility since the slave newspapers in south carolina responded to lincoln. he said the level of vitriol, nastiness about trump was astounding. you still see it. we are in the middle of a real crisis. this is a real crisis. if you go back and rerun these various white house briefings, you will see reporters engaged in a kind of gotcha, not trying to understand what is happening at a national level or worldwide. i think it is a disservice to tryingntry that they are to get donald trump and not trying to understand history has come to america. these are big events that are

going to shape all of our lives. they may in the long run be as decisive as world war ii. and we are not getting that kind of news coverage worthy of that scale of event. host: shannon, thanks for waiting. palm city, florida. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i appreciate being able to reach out to you and to somebody like newt gingrich, that i have seen in the public spotlight my entire life. i was wondering what kind of insights he has from clinton's impeachment trial to today, following trump. now that we know he was cheating on his wife. and then cheating on his mistress. also, i want to reiterate that, you don't actually have a current position in office, correct?

you do not hold office? guest: i am a citizen. caller: with your wife? and we are speaking with you on the coronavirus? ambassadorife is the of the united states to the holy see, representing the united states to the pope and to the vatican. she has an official job. i don't. i am a private citizen. i write books, i give speeches, i teach courses, i do consulting i try to bring to bear whatever i have learned over the years. i try to figure out, where do we go from here? i think we have enormous challenges as a country and it is important to find solutions. i was speaker of the house. we did balance the federal budget for four years. we did reform the fda.

we did reform welfare. working in a bipartisan way with clinton and with democrats. i am willing to look at how we get the country back on the right track and how do we get problems solved. i appreciate your call. i don't think you need to be nervous, you're just talking to another fellow citizen, not somebody who has an important government job. host: the website includes his podcasts and his latest book entitled "shakedown." larry is joining from twentynine palms california. caller: good morning. newt, russia helped us win the guy wina helped this the election. that is why he is not a legitimate president. you are talking and giving classes around the world like you know and you don't even know russia helped this guy? they just had another investigation that said this guy is not legitimate. why won't you stick up for

america? you are a liar. donald trump knew three months in advance and did nothing. he let american people die. his ties are made in china. his daughter has all these patents in china. come on. wake up. you are making a fool out of america, just like this trump is. guest: all i can say is that what you said about the president is explicitly not true. the chinese lied about the virus and they lied to the world health organization and to everyone else. if you would like to, look at the hudson institute's timeline. it is clear and goes day by day. to suggest anything else -- i understand you have a chip on your shoulder. and you unhappy. but the fact is the fact is this virus first appeared in november. the chinese did not report it. what began to spread and was

becoming an epidemic, the chinese lied about it. they locked up the doctors who were trying to warn about it. they convinced the world health organization to issue a report saying it was not a threat, there was no sign of any human to human transmission, which was a total falsehood. if you want to talk about facts as opposed to having a chip on your shoulder, i recommend you look at the timeline. host: do you have a view of what senator mitch mcconnell said this past week, the view that states should consider the possibility of proceeding with bankruptcy, in lou of federal dollars, to help the states impacted by this pandemic? guest: i have a bias. former governor jeb bush and i wrote an op-ed suggesting bankruptcy was an alternative. i want to draw a distinction between helping get through the immediate crisis, which i am for, and a bailout, which i am opposed to.

to the degree we are helping small businesses and airlines is -- it is legitimate to help states and local governments in a bridge back to a better time. for politicians who think this is a chance to come into the federal government and get hundreds of billions of dollars to pay off really bad pension deals that they cut with government employee unions. illinois is a total disaster because its politicians consistently sold out the future. now they would like the rest of the country to bailout illinois. wrote yearsh and i ago is still true and we are going to republish it, that they again,d grounds to say, i need to bridge the current

problem yes. belling states out? no. if you are in such bad shape you need a bailout, corrupt bailouts -- let it go to bankruptcy. do not ask the other 49 states to cover up your bad decisions. host: from warren, pennsylvania. good morning, frances. caller: i am a registered democrat. i am a 79-year-old grandmother, i have never missed an election. i think we can do something that is a first this time. i am going to stay home and not vote. host: what would you tell frances, mr. gingrich? guest: i would say, congratulations on being 90, and having a lifetime of being an active voter.

even if you go and write in the name of your favorite political leader, men and women risking their lives all over the world fighting for your right to vote. fighting for your right to be a free people. if you think everybody is that's terrible, write in somebody you like. but don't avoid being a citizen. and don't avoid being active just because you don't like either biden or trump. think about your congressman and senators, county commissioners, state legislators, a lot of things are at stake than just the presidency. i would hope that with your long life and experiences, you would think about what america has meant to you and would decide it is worth voting. host: should that include voting by mail? to make it more accessible to all americans? guest: if you look at states that have controlled voting by mail where you know the person themselves voted, we have been able to do a good amount.

what we have to be wary of is the vote harvesting model where anyone can collect signatures and show up, there is no check in to see if they are registered. i would draw that distinction. several states have only voting by mail and they seem to have had good experience with them. host: let's go to albert in new jersey. caller: good morning. i am curious, i wish everybody was as intelligent as mr. gingrich. you can tell why he wrote 40 books. just to the facts, it seems like everyone is saying this and that about the coronavirus. president could have done better, i think he did the best he could with when he got the

information. like mr. gingrich said, if you go on google and do the research yourself, i have been reading about the virus, they knew about it in december. that it was from a bat i forgot, , it was chinese. people have criticized the president. i think he was doing the best he could with what he has. everybody should get on board and do the best they can. and stop the bickering and do the best they can, that's all. thank you, mr. gingrich, and have a good evening. guest: thank you. to reinforce your point, a lot of people currently criticizing the president, including joe biden, are people who criticized him when he did cut off travel. so, you can't have it both ways. if you look at the coverage right after he cut off travel, you see the people criticizing him, saying it was racism or

xenophobia, those people are now saying he did not act sooner. that is nice in retrospect, but -- [indiscernible] had they cut off from travel from europe too, that would have saved new york city. host: our next caller is a regular viewer from ithaca, new york. good morning, pastor it is , always good to hear from you. caller: good morning, steve. good morning mr. gingrich. before i begin, i would like to thank everyone behind the scenes who put all of us on every day, every program from c-span. host: you are always kind to say that, sir. go ahead with your question. caller: i have a personal one for mr. gingrich, the husband of the ambassador, proud of that, i was in rome last year for palm sunday and was on the vatican square.

the vatican security welcomed me and my service dog. and we were attacked then at st. john's when i would to celebrate my 30th year of ministry. this is pastor michael vincent, ministry pro bono for 30 years, the embassy helped us after the police took umbrage for me trying to go to thursday mass. i would like to make a personal appeal to you, that maybe after this, someone at the embassy could get back to me. i am a daily reviver. a me too-er. the pappas he asked me to bring over documents on being raped in the new york seminary, fired by

a priest the washington post said was having relationships with a teen in a cincinnati jail. i was told to mail-in. ithaca,eless now in with my service dog. i have had two regional attorney generals say the social services staff to be arrested because of maltreatment. i was unable to see you when you spoke last year at cornell. my alma mater. i had been invited to do a phd in sustainable energy. michael bloomberg was ordered to house me in 2011 and didn't. they retaliated and i won a 40 months rent strike against joseph greenblatt who is in prison from stealing with hud secretary andrew cuomo and bill clinton. i was in your area between 1982 and 1992. i worked with everyone,

including sultan prince an hour bin -- sultan prince band r. ban prince mohammed bender bin sultan. we extend our prayers. host: i have got to jump in, do you have a point? i think he hung up. for somebody who wants assistance from the embassy, or anybody, what is the best procedure? guest: i think if they are in rome and have a problem, at the vatican, they can call the embassy. holy see. if it is in the rest of rome, they would call the american embassy to rome. we have what is called a -- that is both the ambassador to italy and the ambassador to the vatican. my advice would be to anybody, if you end up with a problem in rome, check with the american

embassy. if you have a problem at the vatican, you should check with the vatican embassy. i want to pick up on his first comment and say, on c-span, i am someone who has been with you since the opening five weeks or six week of c-span i am amazed , at the job you do. i find myself following -- the material you put out after every single white house briefing. and the amount of material you all have now in your archives, as a historian, is truly historic. i want to thank everybody at c-span who goes out of their way to involve every citizen in the country in the process of self-governance. it is an amazing public invention. as always, brian, one of the great social entrepreneurs of the last half-century. host: hopefully he is watching

and heard your comments. let's go to virginia. caller: good morning. i think the time difference in rome is a little different than here in virginia. my concern is, over the last weeks i have been watching one american news. i learned in 2005 and 2006, the governor of california was compiling and buying ventilators and ppe because he was afraid of katrina some disaster would happen in california. so he was gearing up for a disaster. when governor brown came in, he said none of that was needed to prepare california for any types of earthquakes, fires or medical emergencies. he stopped all of that. so meantime, california had a great amount of money built up for the state rainy day fund. even in 2019, gavin newsom's

administration had $20 billion in a state fund, yet he still asks for money from the federal government. everybody needs help, i don't taxpayers and disagree, but the difference between what a republican governor was doing, compared to -- the same thing with the gas tax in california. when i lived out there. host: i will stop you there. thank you for your comment. we will get response from newt gingrich. guest: there are a number of states that should have done a better job. frankly, the federal government should have done a better job. president george w. bush's after that sars epidemic, had come back and said we need to buy a substantial number of masks and additional ventilators. that was never executed. so we are playing catch-up across-the-board. hade are some places people

entire stockpiles and threw them out. because they wanted the space. you have to look city by city and state by state. what is impressing to me watching the briefings is the number of private sector companies that have piled on and started producing things, the sheer volume of production. -- american production. canfact that the president presently have enough ventilators to help parts of the world and they announced a program to help italy, for example. worldwideave a pandemic, as the largest economy in the world and the most advanced in science and technology, the u.s. can do an awful lot to save lives all around not just in our own , country. that was a great question. i think a number of these states -- i do not want to see us turn of the judgment bridge of money to sustain into a bailout to a

bunch of state's whose politicians routinely get reelected. host: when church services resume for catholics, christians, synagogues for those of the jewish faith, what will it look like? over the next 6-9 months, to the next year, what are you hearing? guest: i should say, later today we will be watching, streaming from the basilica in washington, where my wife sang for 20 years. we have also watched the pope from st. peter's. it is area to look at these great churches that can hold thousands of people and have maybe 15 people in them. there are 900 churches in rome. i think the initial phase will be social spacing. limited attendance. if you can socially space 3000

or 4000 people in st. peter's. you could certainly social space 1000 people in the basilica. 500-i think local churches will learn how to do this. it is important. i thought it was outrageous in minnesota when the governor declared churches were not essential, but medical services like planned parenthood were. that is something strange about where his values are. host: his new book is "shakedown" it is about what? guest: it is about a russian plot to destroy washington and baltimore by setting off a nuclear weapon. underwater. two americans stop them. host: newt gingrich from rome. the former speaker of the house. we thank you for being with us. please come back. guest: thank you. i look forward to it, maybe in the studio. [laughter] host: