Former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is pushing back against reports that he was highly critical of Donald Trump during his speech Wednesday at the 2016 BIO International Convention in San Francisco.
During Gingrich’s speech, Stat News reporter Rebecca Robins was live tweeting and quoted Gingrich as saying that Trump was an “absurd amateur” and his comments on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel were a “really stupid mistake.”
.@newtgingrich: Trump “made a really stupid mistake last week, and it took him about 3 days to learn.” Calls Trump an “absurd amateur.”
— Rebecca Robbins (@RebeccaDRobbins) June 8, 2016
Several outlets picked up the story based on Robbins’ reporting, which prompted Gingrich to push back and say his comments were being taken out of context.
Totally misleading report about my talk at Bio this morning. In 90 minute dialogue made clear Trump is learning, a gifted amateur, will win
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 8, 2016
Following the tweet, Robbins released a transcript of the speech which shed more light on Gingrich’s comments. While the phrasing “absurd amateur” is awkward, the context of the speech suggests that rather than slamming Trump Gingrich was expressing his disbelief that Trump could do so well with no background in politics.
“You have a Trump— this absurd amateur,” he said, according to Robbins’ transcript. “I mean it’s not technically possible—I mean, all of us, men and women in politics— it’s not possible to announce in June for the presidency having never run for anything and beat out 16 people, of whom at least 8 or 9 of them are really serious people who you would have normally thought they were potential presidents.”
Full transcript of segment of @newtgingrich remarks about Trump at #BIO2016 panel this AM. https://t.co/xteZIL70Nj pic.twitter.com/UIsFek9tSC
— Rebecca Robbins (@RebeccaDRobbins) June 8, 2016
Gingrich has had a consistently inconsistent record on Trump. While he went on Sean Hannity Tuesday night to praise Trump’s speech following the night’s primaries, the day before he took Trump to task for his attacks on Curiel, calling his comments “inappropriate.”
Why walk it back, Grinch? You so rarely get one right.
I knew it! The original reports made Gingrich sound too reasonable and smart – neither of which apply to Gingrich.
Both the original Tweet and Newt’s response seem misleading to me. But who really cares what Newt thinks anyway.
I am not sure if Newt Gingrich or Bill Kristol have the greatest failure rate on predictions. They are both damned bad, bad, bad and so full of themselves. It must be Newt because he looks “fuller.”
You could say one out of three ain’t bad—he’s not at all gifted, and he’s not learning a damn thing, but he’s sure as hell an amateur—but actually one out of three is pretty bad, even for a bonehead like Newt Gingrich. Trump is no more gifted than a Tickle Me Elmo doll. He was what the base wanted for Christmas and there you are. We’ll see how much the man’s gifts enable him to learn from this point on, but I don’t think it’s going to be much.