Fox News Network
September 30, 2008
By Bill O'Reilly 
  
O'REILLY: Now for the top story tonight, let's bring in FOX News analyst Newt Gingrich, who has reluctantly changed his mind on the federal bailout. The speaker is in Washington. His new book is "Contract with the Earth." And it's now out in paperback. He's also got "Drill Now". You got so many books, you can start your own library here. All right now. 

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NEWT GINGRICH,
 
FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: But before we go on, Bill, I just want to share with everybody, we can both enjoy each other's book. And this is a great new book.
 
O'REILLY: Thank you.
 
GINGRICH: A bold fresh piece of humanity. And I got to tell you, for anybody who's interested, this is a very different version of you than they're going to find in anything else you've ever written.
 
O'REILLY: Well, thank you. I didn't known the Speaker was going to do that. I appreciate the plug very much.
 
Now let's react to Barney Frank first of all, because Frank is one of these people along with Nancy Pelosi who is using this as an ideological let's attack the Republicans. Instead of trying to fix it, he wants to have a political fight on the floor while the American people suffer. Am I wrong in that evaluation?
 
GINGRICH: No, I think that's particularly true to Speaker Pelosi, who gave a very nasty and combative and partisan speech yesterday at a time when she should have been trying to get the House to work together to pass the bill.
 
But - and in fact was not the speech that here staff had written, which is a much milder and more positive speech. And I think she - her emotions got the best of her.
 
Barney Frank is a classic, very pro government, very pro giving people something they haven't paid for kind of person. And he and Chris Dodd spent years pressuring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, protecting them, strengthening them.
 
There's a quote where the head of, I think it was Freddie Mac, said at one point in a speech to the congressional Black Caucus that these two institutions wouldn't have survived without the Democratic party, that they saw the Democratic party as their family.
 
You go back and you look at these speeches. And you look at things that make quite clear they had a strategy. It made these institutions and others loan money to people who couldn't pay it back. And the net result was one of the causes of the mess.
 
O'REILLY: Frank denies that. Frank is saying flat out, that's not what I did. He's just denying it. Now you say that. Congressman Culverson said what he said. You just heard. We have a.
 
GINGRICH: Look.
 
O'REILLY: Go ahead.
 
GINGRICH: Well, in the housing bailout this summer, the Democrats, Frank and Dodd insisted on including $500 million a year to Acorn, which was a left wing community group which became famous, in part, for demonstrating and pressuring banks to make bad loans to poor people. I mean, this was their technique. And in fact, at one time, Acorn actually brought in Barack Obama as a young man. And he trained them on how to go and embarrass and humiliate and put pressure on bank presidents and bank officials to get them to make bad loans to poor people.
 
O'REILLY: All right, so Frank is.
 
GINGRICH: (INAUDIBLE)
 
O'REILLY: Frank is not telling - he's trying to rewrite history now. I guess that's what you're trying to do. But I was just shocked. I mean, he picks me out. And I'm saying listen, Barney, I gotcha. I gotcha. I know what you did. Everybody knows what you did. Now you say you didn't do it. So what's that all about? I don't know
 
Now, you changed because the last time we spoke last week, you were against the bailout. And then yesterday issued a statement saying look, I don't like it, And I don't like it either. I don't think anybody likes it. But now I reluctantly have to go along. Why did you do that?
 
GINGRICH: Well, first of all, John McCain came back and really empowered John Boehner and the House Republicans who have been holding out. And as a result for the first time on Friday, they began to change the bill. They took out all of the left wing special interest spending that the Democrats had tried to put in. They made the bill significantly better, not a good bill yet, but significantly better.
 
And I spent part of the weekend talking with people I trust who are very, very successful, all of whom said to me as business people not folks who have a lot of money in the market, but people who run businesses that they believe we are on the edge of a real credit crisis. And they said that doing nothing would be far worse than accepting a bad.
 
O'REILLY: And that's the conclusion I came to last week. See, I could have saved you a lot of trouble over the weekend if you had listened to me last week. Now as soon as you came out, it's almost like clockwork. As soon as you said OK, I'm reluctantly going to support the bailout, NBC news attacked you. NBC News. Roll the tape.
 
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: .was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal. Not only that it was a terrible deal, but it was a disaster, that it was the end of democracy as we know it, that it was socialism.
 
And then at the last minute comes out with a statement when the vote is already in play.
 
O'REILLY: OK. So I don't know why she went after you. Did you call her up and ask her?
 
GINGRICH: No, I don't know why Andrea, I mean, I've known Andrea for years. I don't know why she went after me.
 
All I can tell you is that I do think it's not a very good bill. I do not like the idea of Treasury having this much power. I do think that it is very, very dangerous, but I thought that doing nothing was worse. And that statement I gave to Congressman Boehner to use publicly, they had it to tell any member who was curious about my position. I also said it publicly on a TV show on Sunday. So I think it's a little hard to argue.
 
O'REILLY: I don't know why she's going after you, Mitchell is going after you, other than the fact that, you know, NBC News, a far left operation.
 
GINGRICH: Well, you know, MSNBC has lost -- I think MSNBC is so far over the cliff.
 
O'REILLY: No, but this is Andrea Mitchell now. I mean, she's NB News.
 
GINGRICH: Right.
 
O'REILLY: You know, she shows up on that place once in a while when she gets lost in the corridor.
 
All right, what's going to happen on Thursday? Is this bill finally going to pass and everything going to get settled down. Certainly "Wall Street Today" believes that will happen. An d it was up almost 500 points.
 
GINGRICH: Well, I think that there's very likely the bill will be improved just a little bit. Probably include unlimited insurance for FDIC institutions for people to keep their money in. Maybe have one or two more tweaks that are, I think, useful and important. Probably include language on the mark to market accounting principle which I have been hammering away at for 10 days later, and which Chris Cox should have changed, frankly, two weeks ago.
 
I think with those things, it'll probably get just enough votes to pass. My guess is it'll come from the Senate. And this time, the set-up will go first. And I think they will pass advice significant margin on Thursday.
 
All right, Mr. Speaker as always, thanks very much. We appreciate it.
 
Next on the rundown, what exactly should you do with your money right now, assuming you have any left, we'll tell you. And later, the Duke, John Wayne, dominates the great American culture quiz. Upcoming.