"He's a mythic figure": Gingrich fawns over Trump after Zuckerberg visit

The ex-House Speaker said the president-elect was "like some of the people who come out of the Viking sagas"

By Griffin Eckstein

News Fellow

Published November 30, 2024 12:28PM (EST)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during the America First Agenda Summit organized by America First Policy Institute AFPI on Tuesday, July 26, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during the America First Agenda Summit organized by America First Policy Institute AFPI on Tuesday, July 26, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich likened Donald Trump to heroes of ancient epics in a fawning interview with Fox News’s Kellyanne Conway.

During a stop by "Hannity" on Friday, Gingrich rationalized Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s meeting with Trump as a sign that the Facebook boss understood the president-elect's special place in the world.

“I think the only way you can begin to understand this is to take Trump totally outside of normal American politics and recognize that he's a mythic figure,” Gingrich told Conway. “He’s like some of the people who come out of the Viking sagas.”

One of Trump’s earliest GOP backers, Gingrich added that the president-elect survived a shooting and bested Kamala Harris because he was a "genuine, historic leader."

The former speaker claimed the tech billionaire and other powerful figures’ embrace of Trump was a sign of a “cultural change that you see maybe twice in a century.”

Some, including The New York Times's Maggie Haberman, saw the Meta CEO’s Wednesday trip to kiss the ring at Mar-A-Lago as an indication that big tech figures are cozier to Trump than during his first term.

“As with a number of industries, but certainly the tech industry, a lot of people coming to Trump and not the other way around,” Haberman said in a CNN interview on Wednesday night. 

Mar-A-Lago, the center of Trump’s transition, has hosted former Trump critics like Zuckerberg, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in recent weeks.


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