“Understanding Donald Trump” by Newt Gingrich-Authorship Confirmed!
Summary of eRumor:
An editorial titled “Understanding Donald Trump” that has been making the rounds has been attributed to Newt Gingrich.
The Truth:
Newt Gingrich wrote the “Understanding Donald Trump” editorial, and it was published in the Washington Times on January 6, 2016.
In the editorial, Gingrich discusses how he read Trump’s 1986 “Art of the Deal” over Christmas, and marvels at how Trump had “developed a remarkable seed of rules and principles that allow him to make decisions with incredible speed.”
Gingrich recounts his favorite example from the book, how Trump fixed New York’s Wooman Rink after years of disrepair:
New York City tried for six years to fix it, spent $13 million, and the rink still was not ready to open.
In June of 1986 Mr. Trump, who could see the rink from his apartment, finally got tired of the embarrassment and offered to fix the rink at his own expense.
At first the city turned him down because its bureaucracy did not want to be embarrassed by someone fixing something they couldn’t fix. Mr. Trump kept pushing and finally out of embarrassment the city gave in.
The key part of the story is Mr. Trump’s reaction to being put in charge. He promptly recognized that he didn’t know anything about fixing a skating rink. He asked himself who built a lot of skating rinks. “Canadians!” he concluded. He found the best Canadian ice skating rink construction company.
When the Canadians flew in to assess the situation, they were amazed at how bad the city had been at solving the problem. They assured Mr. Trump that this was an easy job.
Mr. Trump fixed the 6-year-old embarrassment two months ahead of schedule and nearly $800,000 under budget. (The city did end up paying for the work, and Mr. Trump donated the profits to charity.)
Gingrich goes on to write that the book is filled with similar examples of Trump’s ability to delegate tasks to solve complicated problems, which has been part of Trump’s presidential platform.
New Gingrich has touted Trump throughout the campaign. He said in February that it was time for the GOP to see Trump as the “inevitable nominee,” and he said Trump would “tower over” his competitors on Super Tuesday, for example.
Gingrich has stopped short of publicly endorsing Trump, but that hasn’t stopped rumors that Gingrich had undertaken a “secret campaign” for Trump.