Gingrich: Obama Had ‘Unique Opportunity’ to Fix Inner Cities, But They Have Gotten Worse

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reflected on President Barack Obama’s handling of the inner cities, particularly as there has been civil unrest in Charlotte, NC.

Gingrich argued Obama had an opportunity to take some of these problems on, but has so far failed and he pointed to education woes in inner cities as proof.

“All of the major cities, all of them governed by Democrats are disasters,” Gingrich said. “We look at Baltimore where 13 percent of the students pass the eighth grade math test. Look at Detroit where about 9 percent of the students are passing a third grade reading test. You know, more Americans have been killed while Obama was president in Chicago than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.”

“And I think the president had a unique opportunity, but my guess is he was afraid it would make him a black president in a narrowing sense,” he continued. “He could have launched a program to try and reopen and reengineer hope in these communities. And instead, he became the person who talked about the Cambridge policeman was wrong, and you know Ferguson was wrong, and Florida was wrong. In fact in most of those cases, the news media was wrong. You just said an example here – the family says the guy was unarmed. How would they know? They weren’t there.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor