Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said President Donald Trump's first trip abroad as commander in chief will be remembered as a "historic turning point."
On Fox News Wednesday, the former presidential candidate commented on Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia, in which he called upon a "coalition of nations" to "stamp out extremism" and "drive out the terrorists from your places of worship."
"The speech was so powerful," Gingrich said to host Sean Hannity. "I think people will look back on this and say, 'What a historic turning point.' ... He's talking to the leadership of the Sunni world and they're taking it. They're applauding it."
On Wednesday, Gingrich wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in which he praised Trump's speech as a "decisive shift in U.S. foreign policy."
"Never before has an American president tried so clearly to unite the civilized world, including the nations of the Middle East and Africa, against the forces of terrorism," he wrote. "Never before has an American president issued so direct a challenge to those nations to do more in the fight. And never before has an American president so plainly put the ultimate responsibility for eradicating terrorism on the nations of the region."
Gingrich added on Fox News that he's "very surprised at how intensely serious [Trump] is" about forging a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine.
"Things [are] happening that are practical, that are real," he said. "Very much Donald Trump-like."
Gingrich then confirmed his wife Callista's nomination for U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
"As a girl who grew up in the church and who sings in the Basilica [of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington], she's amazingly excited by it," he said.
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