On Tuesday, Politico’s Jake Sherman reported former House Speaker and 2012 GOP presidential nomination contender Newt Gingrich owed between $250,001 and $500,000 to Tiffany & Co., a high-end jewelry store, which was revealed in a financial disclosure filed in the mid-2000s when his Callista Gingrich was employed by the House Agricultural Committee.
Although the relevance isn’t clear why this is news, as Fox News Channel’s “On the Record” host Greta VanSusteren pointed out on her Tuesday show, she still inquired about the report in an interview with Gingrich. She asked Gingrich about it and if it had been paid. Gingrich’s reply: No comment.
“Now later on I want you to watch this particular segment, Greta,” Gingrich replied. “And notice I talked about jobs. I talked about the price of gasoline. I talked about all sorts of real problems for real Americans that in a presidential campaign — we could talk, we could bring up. And I think it sort of fit in perfectly and my answer to you is I’m not commenting on stuff like that. I am perfectly happy to talk about what we need to do for America and what we need to do to help Americans. But I frankly don’t want to play the gotcha games in Washington and I’m just not going to participate.”
Gingrich attempted to rationalize why this report had been thrust in the public, explaining it away as “part of running for president” and told VanSustren he had no intentions to answer those types of questions.
“Part of running for president is that everything you ever did, every person you ever knew, name it,” Gingrich replied. “Sooner or later somebody somewhere is going to run across it. It will show up. I’ve just decided if it doesn’t relate to a better future for America, if it doesn’t relate to helping the American people, if it doesn’t relate to solving our problems from here on out my answer is going to be ‘I’m not commenting on it,’ and people can decide if you want to play Trivial Pursuit that is fine. But I’m going to play Trivial Pursuit. I’m going to try to help this country get back on track.”
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