Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox Business Wednesday and blasted Democratic leaders for what he called a catastrophic miscalculation during the government shutdown.

The federal government shut down at midnight Wednesday after Congress failed to approve an interim funding bill before the deadline. Appearing on “Kudlow,” Gingrich laid out why he believes Democrats painted themselves into a corner.

“Even if it cripples the Democratic Party, they feel better fighting. I think if Schumer and if Jeffries had tried to cave early—they would have been thrown out, because the base out there wants to fight. They don’t care whether they win or not, they just have to be emotionally involved in fighting Donald Trump. And the result is going to be [that] the country’s watching,” Gingrich told host Larry Kudlow. “The country is against closing the government. The country is against raising spending. So the Democrats adopted a two-no strategy. They wanna close the government in order to get more spending. That’s a double negative. It’s not easy to design a strategy where you’re wrong on both sides.”

Gingrich credited Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought for outmaneuvering Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and progressive Democrats, saying Vought spent years preparing for this opportunity.

“Remember that they understand what Democrat Rahm Emanuel said when he said, ‘You should never waste a crisis.’ Well, they’re not gonna waste this crisis. Russ has been thinking about this all through the four years in the wilderness,” Gingrich said. “We worked with him at America First Policy Institute. He’s brilliant. He understands exactly what he’s doing. And this is why, this is one of those moments where their radical base will not allow them to be rational. They will punish them if they’re rational. They want to see a magic moment of self-sacrifice, and so they want their leaders to stand there.” (RELATED: Jim Jordan Identifies The One Person Who Knows When Shutdown Ends )

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Schumer is intentionally pushing the government toward a shutdown to satisfy the far-left faction of his party. President Donald Trump met with congressional leaders in a last-ditch effort to reach a deal. The talks ended in stalemate, with Democrats holding firm on their health care demands while Republicans stood by a clean funding extension.Days earlier, Trump canceled a planned meeting with top Democrats, dismissing their demands as “unserious and ridiculous.” Although Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries pushed for the sit-down, Trump said their terms made any agreement unlikely.