Newt Gingrich Responds To Trump-Kim Summit: ‘I Think We Have A Real Chance Here’

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) responded to President Donald Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with cautious optimism, telling Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Tuesday morning, “I think we have a real chance here.”

 

Gingrich, responding to the idea that Trump’s harsh rhetoric may be what finally brought Kim to the negotiating table, said that the president was simply operating on the knowledge that the North Korean regime had repeatedly lied to the U.S. and was taking a strong stance to make it clear he wouldn’t take that kind of behavior.

The former speaker also said that Kim’s regime was simply responding to increased scrutiny from the U.S. and realizing that this president was not going to back down from a confrontation.

“I think he felt he was in a position where he had to apply so much pressure both verbal pressure and practical pressure that Kim Jong Un would realize that for his regime to survive, something had to change, the game had to be different,” Gingrich explained.

(RELATED: CNN’s Acosta Actually Shouts Good Question At Kim Jong Un)

And so far, Gingrich said that it appears to be working. He cautioned that there was no way to accurately predict the overall outcome of the summit, but said that Kim appeared to have gotten the desired message.

“I think we have no way of knowing what’s going to happen right now, literally no way, but my instinct is Kim Jong-Un reached a conclusion his regime was more likely to survive in cooperation with the United States than in all-out competition — and he may be taking steps now that literally open the country up in ways that are historic and frankly even from my perspective would have been unthinkable six months or a year ago,” the former speaker stated.