quote, access to newt gingrich. and quote, direct news interaction. we found out today in the wall street journal he was paid by the u.s. chamber of commerce. what did gingrich do for his $120,000 a year salary from the u.s. chamber of commerce? according to the wall street journal, mr. gingrich s assignment with the chamber of commerce was to attend dinner. attend dinner or lunch with chamber officials every few months. $120,000 a year for access to newt. and for the honor of feeding near him. and so, yes, the chamber of commerce supported president obama s stimulus package and newt gingrich is campaigning against the stimulus so there s two facedness there. his health reform group was pro individual mandate. now he says he s always been against the individual mandate. you can find policy scandals. you can find policy scandals and hints about newt gingrich s shall re say transactional
to this federal housing agency. freddie mac. as mr. gingrich has had his recent upward thrust in the polls, pretty much every day has started with a new revelation about how exactly newt gingrich makes all of his money. the freddie mac thing that is referenced here, by the redirected explorenewt2012, the freddie mac thing came to light last week when asked at the cnbc debate about having taken $300,000 from the federal housing agency freddie mac. mr. gingrich previously criticized freddie mac as being responsible for the financial meltdown. he described it as essentially a corrupting thing. he piously demanded politicians who got money from freddie mac should be forced to give that money back. so newt, himself, taking 300 grand from them was kind of a scandal. kind of a do as i say, not as i do hypocrisy moment. and also an interesting window into how he makes his money. since then, it s emerged that it wasn t actually $300,000 that newt gingrich got from freddie mac, it was more like
[ snoring ] sorry. one more thing that has been somewhat confusing about the field of republican candidates for 2012. you may remember that newt gingrich sort of tried to aannounce that he was running, too. in the end, all he did announce was that to makeup his mind whether or not to run, he needed more money and time. in order to collect the time, money, mr. gingrich set up the awkwardly named website newtexplore2012. since newt explore is a creepy concept, someone snapped up the url explore newt 2012. when it was first launched, it automatically relutd to buddy roemer s site. he was the guy that lost to david duke. then it started to redirect to another whole thing. now it redirects to this youtube
you may remember that newt gingrich sort of tried to aannounce that he was running, too. in the end, all he did announce was that to makeup his mind whether or not to run, he needed more money and time. in order to collect the time, money, mr. gingrich set up the awkwardly named website newtexplore2012. since newt explore is a creepy concept, someone snapped up the url explore newt 2012. when it was first launched, it automatically relutd to buddy roemer s site. he was the guy that lost to david duke. then it started to redirect to another whole thing. now it redirects to this youtube video showing newts eating stuff, little larva and stuff. explorenewt2012.com. and every hungry day between now and then as well.
prestige of the speakership of the house. that s what they re selling. it s the newt gingrich signed gavel and newt gingrich framed certificate and the party where you re allowed or guaranteed you ll be allowed to be near newt gingrich. it is the letter you get from the desk of speaker newt gingrich. and today we have learned that it s not just small businesses and doctors who ve been suckered into the whole access to newt fund-raising spam scam. it s big companies, too. today washington post reports that the newt gingrich s health care think tank, the center for health transformation, collected $37 million over the past 8 years from some of the biggest health care companies in the country. companies like astrazeneca and blue cross blue shield and ge health care and wellpoint. all of these companies would pay newt s for h-profit health care thing, $200,000 a year in membership dues. what would they get for their membership dues money? in part, they d get special access to the former