Having spent several decades profiting from a corrupt system, Newt Gingrich feels it proper to rail against the “elites.” No, not the elites like him–the other elites. They’re terrible!

Gingrich has been selling the same narrative as many on the right, arguing that Hillary Clinton, that snob, lost because she didn’t listen to “real” Americans, mythical creatures he’s heard about on Fox News, though she managed to earn nearly 2.9 million more votes than her opponent, even with the Wikileaks and FBI shenanigans.

Today, he’s the same morally bankrupt policy salesman as he was during the ’90s, when he overlooked his own dicey domestic situation to castigate Bill Clinton for his infidelities and push the Family Values platform. Gingrich has always been very concerned with the plague of our citizens on welfare–working to punish them with particularly Draconian measures–though he’s never seemed particularly bothered by corporate welfare. The Washington lifer has spent his political career trying to take a little more away from people who have the least.

On the same day the President-Elect deemed NATO “obsolete,” Gordon Repinski of Spiegel published an interview with the Former Speaker of the House in which he confidently claimed the U.S. relationship with NATO under the incoming Administration would not change dramatically. Maybe not, but it might be good if these boys could get on the same page.

In the Q&A, Gingrich makes the Trumpian gambit of defending the Russians hacking our elections by criticizing America. Yes, this is the genius who during the 1980s compared President Ronald Reagan to Neville Chamberlain for merely meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. So fluid are Gingrich’s politics and so often on the wrong side of history.

An excerpt about Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin:

Spiegel:

Let’s talk about Russia again: The American intelligence agencies made a clear assessment about Russian disruptions in the U.S. election campaign. Can Washington tolerate this kind of behavior?

Newt Gingrich:

Well, as you know, Obama was even eavesdropping on your chancellor. You know, countries often do such things. I know of nothing the Russians did which had any effect on the American election.

Spiegel:

The Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain have a totally different view on the information and have called for a strong American reaction.

Newt Gingrich:

I’m a little tired of people who have very big moral positions and very small power in reality. I think the cost for taking on the Russians would be very high. I just want to know how they’re going to do it. I don’t see that we would do more than make noise. I think Putin has already gotten used to the idea of Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, making noise — it just doesn’t seem to impress Moscow at all.

Spiegel:

Trump frequently mentions his sympathy for Vladimir Putin. Can you describe why Vladimir Putin seems to be so appealing to Donald Trump?

Newt Gingrich:

No, not really. I think he thinks of Putin as being a strong person, and I think he thinks of himself as being a very strong person. But I don’t think in any way that he thinks of the Putin government as a desirable model.•