Newt Gingrich Wants a Congressional Investigation

Recent comments from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich have resulted in claims he’s calling for a return to “McCarthyism” from many liberals.

During a Facebook livestream Tuesday, he railed against President Obama, defended Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting Donald Trump’s call for a pause in Muslim immigration to the U.S., and called for a congressional investigation into “Islamic supremacism” and terrorism in America.

He opened the video by responding to Obama’s question of “what would change” if he began using the phrase “radical Islam.” Gingrich said it would “provide clarity,” and would define the threat to the nation, calling the Islamist attacks “acts of war.”

Obama’s policies and statements have created an environment where those charged with protecting Americans are too afraid to do so for fear they may be declared anti-Muslim, Gingrich added. He said the president’s speech Tuesday morning, and the anger he unleashed toward those who criticized him were “helpful,” even if his actions have not.

“The president does America and the West a great disservice by suggesting that accurately describing Islamic supremacists means we have to be at war with Islam,” he said. “That’s not true.

“If you’re a modern Muslim, if you’re willing to accept diversity, if you’re willing to accept the rule of secular law, if you’re willing to live in peace with your neighbors, we have no problem with you, if you’re a modern Muslim. But, if you believe in sharia, and genuinely believe in it, if you think that gays and lesbians ought to be killed, if you think that Christians and Jews and Baha’i and others ought to either submit or be killed, we have a lot of disagreement.

“If you want to support terrorist movements with money, with recruitment, with propaganda, then you’re our enemy, and the president doesn’t come to grips with this.

“We can no more afford to have fanatic terrorists at home just because they’re American citizens, be allowed to run around, get organized and kill people, than we can afford to bring in thousands of unvetted and unverified Syrian refugees. So I believe the president is profoundly, fundamentally wrong.

“I believe the Congress should create a commission on Islamic supremacism and terrorism in the United States. I think we should start looking at serious new laws.

“The terror that people must have felt, trapped in that nightclub as this enemy of America methodically killed people—it must have been awful. But down the road are more terrible things if we don’t start winning, if we don’t tell the truth, if we don’t learn to be honest about what faces us.

“Down the road is a very real danger of systematic violence. Down the road, there’s a very grave danger that sooner or later, these enemies of the West are going to find nuclear weapons and use them.

“So I think speak through a sense of genuine urgency, because I think this is a mortal threat to our country and certainly a mortal threat to thousands of Americans. And I’m saddened by the president’s attitude. He has had failure after failure. Failure in Libya. Failure in Yemen. Failure in Somalia. Failure in Syria. Failure in Iraq. Failure in Afghanistan.

“And here at home, he has established rules which make it virtually impossible for the FBI to do their job. The Congress ought to review it, make public what the problems are, we should fix them and we should do so before more Americans are killed because of ignorance, timidity and an unwillingness to face reality.”

Tuesday’s video was a continuation of a conversation he initiated on Monday in the aftermath of the Orlando mass shooting. He said he felt it was important to have a “national dialogue” about what is happening, not just in the U.S., but around the world.