President Donald Trump’s decision to hold a glittering party Friday before millions of Americans lost their federal food benefits amid the ongoing government shutdown has apparently baffled even longtime ally and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
“Somebody wasn’t thinking very clearly when they scheduled the Mar-a-Lago party,” he said in an NBC interview on Wednesday. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Democratic lawmakers and pundits have certainly been more vocal in condemning the Halloween bash at Trump’s resort in Florida. Gingrich has long supported Trump, and rarely offered him anything but purely constructive criticism — at least in public.
He appeared to maintain that diplomatic stance by noting “somebody,” without naming Trump, “wasn’t thinking” when they organized a roaring ’20s-themed party with ill-timed allusions to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel “The Great Gatsby.”
The book quite famously explores the empty materialism and destructive carelessness of America’s wealthy, among other themes. Some believe Trump, whose bash was reportedly themed “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody,” was fully aware of its insensitive timing.
Paul Krugman, the 2008 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, argued in his latest newsletter that most attendees “just don’t care about other people’s suffering,” and Friday’s event “was in large part a party held to celebrate others’ suffering.”
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for more than 42 million people were paused Saturday, and while the Trump administration said there’s no way to circumvent this amid the shutdown, it certainly managed to do just that during the shutdown in 2019.
Despite the minuscule criticism he offered about Friday’s party, Gingrich has seemed unbothered by some of the consequences of the shutdown, saying earlier this month that it was “fascinating” how Trump has “begun to systematically lay off people permanently.”
“I think what Trump is gambling is that he can actually change the federal government dramatically during the shutdown,” he said during an Oct. 12 appearance on the “Cats Roundtable” radio show hosted by John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM, per The Hill.
Gingrich continued, “He’s willing to take the heat because, frankly, when he’s busy going to the Middle East to be part of a peace treaty signing, that is astonishing, he’s got other big things he’s doing, so he’s not particularly bothered.”
The Trump administration admitted Wednesday in a new guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that the initial plan to cut federal food benefits by 50% went too far. The memo advised state agencies to reduce maximum benefits by 35% instead.