The next phase of the Trump administration's reaction to the coronavirus epidemic will likely involve a more selective approach toward the economy as more information comes in about the disease's growth, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday.
"As we get more material, we need to modify it toward a much more selective approach," Gingrich told Fox News' "Fox & Friends." "I mean, if you live in a county, for example, that has nobody with the virus. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to close everybody down for that county. If you have a truck-based society and you want to make sure there is food in the grocery store, you have got to find a way to get truckers to travel safely."
The question is, Gingrich said, to meet key public health standards while beginning to reopen and rebuild the economy, and he thinks President Donald Trump's sense of timing is right with a tweet that said the cure should not be worse than the cure.
The first few weeks of the coronavirus epidemic have been a "mobilization period," in which effort and materials are growing to handle the pandemic, said Gingrich, who is in Italy with his wife Calista, the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See.
In Italy, where thousands have died, it is a "very real crisis," and the world's nations, including Cuba, Russia, and China are there helping.
"Clearly, we have to find ways to help them," Gingrich said. "As we ramp up our production, we will become the medicine chest of the world."
Meanwhile, the impasse in the Senate over the coronavirus relief bill is frustrating, but unfortunately "classic," Gingrich said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., think they can "blackmail" Trump into accepting "really dumb ideas," he added.
"I think the American people need to understand we can get something done immediately this week," Gingrich concluded.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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