Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich compares GOP frontrunner Donald Trump to Andrew Jackson, saying the GOP hurts itself by pushing away the new voters Trump brings to the party.

“Does he have contradictions in his past? Of course he does,” Gingrich tells Breitbart News Daily Friday morning. “The only president remotely like Trump is Andrew Jackson. Trump would be an absolute outlier in the terms of the trajectory of American politics.”

“We’ve already seen when he announced June 16th and became the frontrunner in the first day. We’ve seen the force of will. We’ve seen a tactical cleverness,” Gingrich said. “It’s ironic to me that people are now saying, ‘Boy, we’re really lucky, because we’re going to have a lot of closed primaries and caucuses, where only Republicans can vote.’ Now, what are they saying? They’re saying Donald Trump is bringing in so many independents and so many Democrats, that in open primaries and open caucuses, he has a huge advantage.”

“Now think about that!” he continued. “If you were a company, and someone said to you, oh my God, look how many new customers are coming. Can’t we narrow the door? All these strangers are showing up to buy our products. God, what a terrible future.”

Pundits on both the left and right have compared Trump to Jackson for months.

“The possibility of Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee for president and thereafter being elected to that high office elicits an historical perspective. The name that most readily reflects the credentials and character of Donald Trump is Andrew Jackson,” Historian Alfred J. Zacher wrote three months after Trump announced his run. “Jackson like Trump was a popular figure of power and success as the general who won the battle of New Orleans. He was a successful lawyer and judge, though known as being hot headed, vulgar and impulsive… Jackson believed the government was benefiting the wealthy and monopolies to the detriment of the average American.”

“In large part, Donald Trump is a Jacksonian, the tradition originally associated with the Scotch-Irish heritage in America and best represented historically by the tough old bird himself, Andrew Jackson. Old Hickory might be mystified that a celebrity New York billionaire is holding up his banner (but, then again, Jackson himself was a rich planter). Trump is nonetheless a powerful voice for Jacksonian attitudes,” National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote in November after the deadly Paris slaughter carried out by Muslims in Europe.

“Consciously or not, Mr. Trump’s campaign echoes the style of Andrew Jackson, and the states where Mr. Trump is strongest are the ones that most consistently favored Jackson during his three runs for the White House,” NPR’s “Morning Edition” host Steve Inskeep wrote in the New York Times in February. “What Mr. Trump borrows from Jackson is not an issue, but a way of thinking about the world. Mr. Trump promises to fix his supporters’ problems, no matter who else is hurt. He’s a wealthy celebrity always ready for a fight, a superpatriot who says he will make America great again. He vows to attack government corruption and defend the common man. All this could be said of Jackson.”

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