GINGRICH: There has to be some sense of everybody’s in the same boat — and I think again, as I said, he’s gonna have to explain why would Bain have taken $180 million out of a company and then have it go bankrupt, and to what extent did they have some obligation to the workers? Remember, these were a lot of people who made that $180 million, it wasn’t just six rich guys at the top, and yet somehow they walked off from their fiduciary obligation to the people who had made the money for them.

So from what I was told, the Reagan White House dispatched George H. W. Bush to go to Perot and explain what they wanted, what they needed. They asked for Perot to help fund the potential rescue mission — and Perot was willing to — but he said he wanted to go. He wanted to be part of it. He wanted to be on the front lines. And they said, “Oh, no, no, no. You can’t go. Nobody can know. No, no, no. You can’t have any role in this.” And a couple of other things, and Perot felt — (sigh) what’s the word? — slighted, betrayed, what have you, ’cause that was after. They told him after they got the money that he wasn’t gonna be able to be involved in it anyway, and from what I was told — and it was by somebody in the inner circle of Bush — that that led to the desire of Perot to wage payback.
