Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Thursday condemned former Vice President Joe Biden’s stance on the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Speaking to Catholic Trump supporters from Rome, where his wife, Callista, serves as ambassador to the Vatican, Gingrich called the dispute between the Little Sisters, the Obama administration, and, by extension, the Biden campaign “one of the most bizarre fights in American history.”
“The idea of going after nuns, whose only vocation is to take care of the poor, and trying to force them to purchase insurance that would force them to cover abortions — I think that tells you how really totalitarian the Left is becoming,” Gingrinch said.
Gingrich contrasted Biden’s promise to reinstate the contraception mandate on the Little Sisters — after the Supreme Court this summer ruled the religious order did not have to follow it — with President Trump’s support for the group. Trump in 2017 issued an executive order exempting the Little Sisters from the mandate, and the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidelines the next year extending those protections.
Gingrich also laid into Biden for his flip last year on the Hyde Amendment, a legislative provision that bans federal funding of abortions in most cases, calling his newfound opposition to it “remarkably uncaring.”
“There are a number of these kinds of things going on,” Gingrich said of Biden’s leftward slide on social issues.
Gingrich’s criticisms come as the Trump campaign zeroes in Biden’s opposition to the Hyde Amendment and the Little Sisters. The two issues, which represent Biden’s most dramatic turns from his self-described centrist record, in the past weeks have become talking points for many Trump surrogates pitching the president’s own record on issues important to religious people.
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday went after Biden for his positions on both the Hyde Amendment and the Little Sisters, saying that the former vice president and “the radical left” are “deeply out of step with the American people.”
Pence said that because of “foundational” issues such as these, the 2020 election is about whether or not “America remains America.”
Trump himself on Thursday made a similar point at an event near Cleveland.
“He’s following the radical left agenda,” Trump said of Biden. “Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything. Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God.”
