Newt Gingrich: Biden, Sanders Race 'Basically Over'

The race between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for the Democrats' presidential nomination is basically over, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in response to a new poll showing Biden with a commanding lead in Florida.

"I think you are going to see from here on out Vice President Biden winning the majority of the delegates," Gingrich told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" Thursday. "I think the race basically is over. Bernie Sanders can stay in to make his ideological argument. It doesn't cost him much, and it allows him to go to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in July and try to negotiate for the platform."

However, Sanders' campaign was "broken" during Tuesday primaries when it couldn't carry Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, or Idaho, Gingrich said.

"The dance will continue a little longer, but I think, also, it will be really overshadowed by the enormous challenge that we are faced with coronavirus," he said. "I think the country will pay a lot more attention to the reality of governing and less attention to the campaign over the next, say, two months."

Gingrich was speaking to Fox News from Italy, where his wife, Callista, serves as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, and said he is seeing the effects of Italy not taking action quickly enough to get ahead of the coronavirus crisis.

"Northern Italy has thousands of cases and, in fact, there are several hospitals that are refusing to treat elderly citizens because they don't have enough intensive care units, and they don't have enough ventilators, and so they have literally begun to triage," Gingrich said.

"This is a pretty good health system. This is not a bad health system. But they are just drowning in northern Italy in the number of people who have the disease. So, everything is closed down."

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