race. >> i'm focused on super tuesday. if you think it's wild from your side, you should see from us. >> i'm looking to have a good time sunday night. >> nobody knows more about hollywood than harvey wienstein. >> people did the secret of the oscars. >> also one of the best oscar pundits around predicts who will walk away a winner sunday night. and why it's an honor just to be nominated for the oscars? this is "piers morgan tonight." our big story tonight, newt gingrich taking aim at president obama on gas prices. >> so the president uses very strong language and says that those of us who believe he can get back to $2 gallon of gas is politics. that's baloney. it was $1.13 a gallon when i was speaker. that's a historic fact. >> in a moment i'll ask newt gingrich did he can really bring it down to $2.50 a gallon. and i'll talk to harvey wienstein about the movie "the artist." >> this is the biggest gamble the company took. it is the craziest thing ever. >> we begin tonight with newt gingrich's campaign that lost some steam since last month. with the michigan and arizona primaries looming on tuesday, the former speaker so far resisted any calls to drop out of the case. newt gingrich joins me now. how are you? >> i'm doing very well. glad to talk to you. i'm in seattle today. >> beautiful part of the world. i've been there many times. let me start with this big story in afghanistan where the repercussions of this koran burning by american forces there continues to cause a lot of blood shed and loss of life. you've been very strong on president obama about his apology. you thought it was completely unnecessary. i want to play you a clip from general allen in afghanistan commanding american troops which is what he had to say about it. >> i offer my sincere apologies. as i have this morning in phone calls to a number of the senior afghans here in kabul, i offered my sincere apologies to the president, to the government, and to the people, the noble people of afghanistan. >> i suppose the obvious question having heard the general there is whether you've now changed your view about president obama's apology. because clearly he was taking his lead from the generals on the ground. and you've always said if you were president, you would do exactly that. >> well, you don't know that he's taking his lead from the general or the general took his lead from the president. i have a very different view of this. first of all, i haven't heard any afghan apologize for an afghan killing to american soldiers and wounding four others. i haven't heard the president ask for an apology from karsai for the killing of two american soldiers and wounding of four others by an afghan soldier. a soldier who was probably paid by the united states, trained by the united states, and equipped by the united states. what you have is deliberate in a situation that would apply in syria where assad routinely has bombed anything he needs to bomb. hasn't happened in other countries in the middle east as long as it was muslim against muslim. and look around the region. churches get burned in nigeria. does anyone apologize? churches get burned in egypt. does anyone get apologized? to 700,000 have fled the country. has anyone apologized? in malaysia, churchs are burned. does anybody apologize? there is a one track that we help enable. i'm not defending burning the koran. although the circumstances in which they were used would zriek me as blasphemous. as i understand it it was using as passing messages to people in prison. we do have this one sided gain where our troops get killed. nobody apologizes. now we're supposed to be the ones on defense. i understand general allen's in a difficult situation. but if president karsai is not prepared to apologize for the killing of two americans by an afghan soldier, the wounding of four others, this is a two way street. and we have to assess what's going on. >> you think it was wrong to general allen to issue an apology before the american forces received an apology for the death of the two soldiers? >> i think had the general and president karsai had a joint appearance and said jointly this is a very unfortunate circumstance. clearly the americans did not intend to cause problems, and clearly the afghan government regrets the deaths of americans. i would feel better. but i think this one sided street that is typical of the obama administration going around the world apologizing for america and never demanding respect. these are troops serving under the commander in chief. and he owes them some protection. and i think that it's very unfortunate that the rules of engagement seem to be entirely one sided. >> given all the controversy of the burning of korans. we had the crazy american pastor doing it last year and creating huge havoc for american troops on the ground. given its sensitivity, given how delicate that particular issue is with people in afghanistan, wasn't it pretty awful that this was allowed to happen in the first place. the incineration of the koran -- >> it was a mistake. you ought to talk to a lieutenant kerncolonel in the u army. ask him how tired people get on the battlefield and how one sided the rules of engagement are. i think we have gotten to a point of bending over backwards where we pretend this is an orderly process. it's not. these folks are engaged in war. a lot of young men and women out there are doing the best they can. and there is an unfortunate tendency to always assume that it's the americans that made mistakes. it's the americans that need to be apologized for. and i'm pretty unrepentn't on this. we're being told we have to be sensitive. i think the other side ought to be a little sensitive too. >> final question on this point. given what you've been saying, there are many that agree with you. it's a debate that's been raging all day. if you were president, are you saying if this had been your situation under your watch, you would not only refuse to apologize before getting an apology from hamid karsai, but you would stop general allen from apologizing? >> what i would have asked for is a joint appearance. look, if we can't be side by side with our afghan ally. we don't have an ally. it's the same pattern playout where we learned for seven years the pakistanis had been protecting bin laden. less than a mile from the deference university. what have we learned since then. did the pakistanis find the person? no they found the person who helped find him. we better get a grip con reality and reassess how we're doing things in a very profound way. i think the region is spinning out of control. i think it's getting more dangerous. >> let's turn to gas prices. if you were president you would get gas prices down to $2.50. you attracted a lot of quizzical eye bbrow eyebrows. my question to you is this. you were very strong about iran. one of the reasons that gas prices have been surging this week is on the back of an increasing fear around the world. can you honestly continue to ramp up against iran and sustain a credible argument that you would at the same time bring gas prices down to $2.50 when everybody knows the two would be linked. >> first of all, that's precisely why we better have an american energy policy. our strategic goals should be to get the u.s. to produce so much oil and gas that we don't care what happens in the strait of hormuz. i think we have an interest in becoming the largest oil producer in the world. and my guess is he could be before the end of this decade. let me give you examples so you understand this is a fact-based analysis. if the president had signed the keystone pipeline, it would be flowing to houston. if the president had reopened the gulf of mexico, 400,000 additional barrels would be under production. if the areas of alaska, there's another million barrels there. this is without opening up any place els. but if the president had prepared to open other areas, you could see us surge in production dramatically. if we had a couple of tax changes including 100% expensing so all equipment could be written off in one year, you would see so many independents out there developing new sources of energy. take a look at north dakota which has 3.5% unemployment and 16,000 unfilled positions in the oil industry because the folks who are unemployed don't have the right skillsets for the jobs available. that is a lot better future for america than the president's policies. >> the president said yesterday that anybody who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn't know what we're talking about or isn't telling the truth. he's saying you're either lying or don't know what you're talking about. >> the president is a left wing radical who appointed dr. choo who has said publicly he wants all prices to reach european levels. to have a secretary of energy who wants us to pay $10 strike me as the opposite of what people want. one of the president's solutions, i just gave you e tl three factual things he could do today with just the signing of the pen. reopen the gulf. open up the areas in alaska. do it today. what does he have? he talks about algae. i think biofuels are important. i've supported biofuels. i think in the long run, algae's important. but the fact he thinks drilling won't work so he's advocating algae? it's close to a saturday night live skit. >> let's take a little break. when we come back, i want to talk about the primary in michigan and the auto bailout issue which continues to rage and polarize opinion. 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[ male announcer ] good choice business pro. good choice. go national. go like a pro. by now my special guest form ek speaker newt gingrich. let's talk about the bailout issue. where do you stand out on the validity of that bailout? >> i think it would have been much better to have gone through a bankruptcy proceeding. i think they probably needed some kind of a bridge loan very a very short period of time but had they gone through a regular bankruptcy that it would have worked out better. they would have had a greater level of change than they finally got. i think the obama administration's propped up the auto union at the expense of everybody else. the prop people have to recognize is the auto industry wasn't in trouble overall. the folks who were in trouble were united auto workers. and the economy's united auto workers refused to make changes in procedures and costs. and the management went along with them. i think that that was exactly the kind of problem that was best solved in a bankruptcy proceeding where the reality of the law forced them. they got less change this way. still have a highest cost structure. i think in that sense this was not as good of an approach. and it was a bad example of the obama administration intervening to pick winners and losers. they picked the united auto workers to win. they picked all of the bondholders to lose. i think that's very dangerous. i think you want the legal process to go forward, not a political process. >> the problem according to those that were involved in this very closely with this idea of a managed bankruptcy is that nobody was prepared to put any money up for this. there was no private equity money available. and in the end, if the government hadn't intervened, you could have easily seen chrysler, gm go under. and the impact on the industry leading to potentially ford hitting big trouble and going under. no government in america could allow that to happen. isn't this slight mythology about the managed bankruptcy because the reality was the private equity money wasn't there to do it anyway. >> what you had was not for making a narrow bridge loan just to get to the initial process. then allow the bankruptcy judge to implement the rules. what you had was political appointees micromanaging. somebody picked by obama. basically carrying out the president's wishes. i think that's very dangerous for the u.s. economy. you don't want american presidents intervening to micromanage as they just did with solyndra. they put up over a half billion in guarantees and we now discovered the guys administrating the bankruptcy are getting bonuses. i think it's dangerous to politicize investment policy and end up with the president choosing winners and losers. and clearly what they did in terms of his appointee going into the chrysler, general motors was pick them to win and pick other people to lose. >> for all the republican candidates as the michigan primary comes along, if you're in michigan in the car industry, you're saying right. there's this huge financial crisis. we're all facing financial armageddon. now the industry's booming. loads of jobs have poured back into michigan. and unemployment is now coming down. so they're saying hang on. how big a disaster could this have been. isn't the reality whether you liked it or not the bailout has worked? >> the reality is that the bailout has worked to some extent. it's also left the union dramatically stronger than it would have been. it has shifted the balance of power inside the company's decisively. and remember chrysler is now fiat. so you saved the american company by making it not an american company. >> let's turn to the republican race. it's been an extraordinary battle to watch. as leadership keeps changing hands. you've been front runner, dead in the water. i can barely keep up with you. the reality where we are now is post the debate last week. the santorum surge hit a bit of a breaker. mitt romney had an okay night. ron paul did a ron paul act. and most people think you had a good night. so does this put you back in the race? the reason i ask is some people in the party have said by your argument which is when you won in south carolina, rick santorum should now stand aside. some say because of the santorum surge you should be standing aside. >> well, i think we have to have this conversation again after we get done with michigan and arizona. but the fact is up until about a week ago, i was clearly the number two spot. i survived romney paying the negative ads in florida. i was still number two. i was number two in nefds. then santorum campaigned in three states nobody else was in. he won them. he bounced forward. and now we'll see how he does in arizona and michigan. i'm focused on super tuesday. you know, if you think this race looks wild from your side, you ought to be with us. callista feel like we've been on a roller coaster. like space mountain where it's all in the dark and you don't know where you're going and where you are. but my mission is to take big ideas, translate an american energy policy. we have a 30 minute speech outlining it. and if you remember, by being positive and having big ideas, we actually in december were ahead by 15 to 21 points nationally without ever having bought a single ad. i'm working back to the same kind of very positive campaign. i think it contrasts decisively with romney's negative campaign. we'll see over the next six weeks how people feel between the choice of a positive conservative and a moderate. i feel like this could turn out to be a very good campaign by the time it's done. >> so the newt gingrich devils horns have been put to one side, and the halo's back. >> the devils horns were largely a media myth. when you're hit with $20 million of negative advertising in three weeks in one state, all sorts of things fall down around you. i always have believed in very large solutions. i think this country can only get back on the right track by very big solutions. as speaker of the house i helped balance the budget for four straight years. we reformed welfare and two out of three people went to work. that was a large solution. we had the biggest -- unemployment dropped to 4.2%. compared to right now that'd be a good world. i'm going to keep campaigning on those type of positive achievements. here in washington state we're getting great reaction. i think we'll do well in the caucuses here. i think we'll do well on super tuesday. >> speak eer gingrich, thank yo very much. >> good to be with you. on monday, more from my candid interview with candidate gingrich including his views on culture wars. coming up next, oscar politics. harvey wienstein goes for gold with his biggest gamble ever, "the artist." 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