Newt Gingrich said he no longer holds a grudge against Mitt Romney, his one-time competitor for the Republican nomination for president.
“Mitt Romney did what he had to do to become the nominee,” Gingrich said. “He’s worked at this six years…When he got to the crunch, he was tough enough and smart enough to beat me in Florida,” he told Chris Matthews on Hardball Thursday night. (Video in two parts.)
Gingrich endorsed Romney for president earlier this month after dropping out of the race himself.
In a wide-ranging interview in which Gingrich compared Romney to Dwight Eisenhower at one point, the former speaker of the House praised Romney for assembling a “very smart group of people,” and listening to them. He called the candidate “a successful politician,” while maintaining that Romney had not always told the truth about Gingrich on the campaign trail.
While Gingrich and several other Republicans who competed in the GOP primary are credited with initiating the attacks on Romney’s record as a businessman, it is the Obama re-election campaign that has more recently taken up that line of attack. Gingrich said he now believes such messages won’t work.
“Here’s the problem they’ve got,” he said of the Obama campaign. “It didn’t work. I wouldn’t have won it on that issue. It doesn’t work in general.”
Gingrich is expected to join Romney for a Donald Trump-headlined fundraiser for the Republican candidate in Las Vegas next week.
Gingrich didn’t skip a beat when asked by Matthews why the Republican party doesn’t just “lose the birther stuff” and drop those like Trump who have raised questions around President Obama’s birth certificate “off the back of the caboose?”
“Beats me,” he said.
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Cudos to both Chris and Newton on the interview. It is rare these days such blunt honesty on a network "news/talk" show! Perhaps it had something to do with your previous relationship and mutual respect but whatever the reason I'd like to see more interviews like the one you had today. If it had only gone longer you would have been on track for an award in my opinion.
Just when you think Chris Matthews can't get any more pathetic, he airs an
UBER-SOFT, lovey dovey interview with Newt Gingrich. Ok when are the two
of them getting married? It was all Chris could do to contain himself from just
locking lips with the Newtster! Un-straddle the fence-believeable!!! Wow Chris,
you are a piece of work... what piece I don't know, but definitely a PIECE OF
WORK!...
Especially for members of the notables in the GOP MSNBC seems to always throw softballs in interviews. Whats really sad is I have to go to multiple news sites regardless if its MSNBC FOX CNN when I read a story to confirm stories if I'm able. I also look up people who were interviewed to find out the real beliefs(core) of the person. I don't know when this crap started the partisanship, propaganda but can we get at least one station to not slant the facts/lie/distort/throwsoftballs. We have some issues and as a country we need to deal with them, lies destroy the truth and therefore the answer
Looks to me Chris is getting his butt whooped! And why is it that Chris keeps avoiding Newts comments on Obama. He spins right away from Obama!
Unbelievable butt kissing job by Gingrich.
Typical butt kissing job by Matthews.
I lost respect for the both of them from this interview.
I thought this show was called 'Hardball'.
MSNBC and the right - when, when, when are you all going to stop allowing the GOP to lie to your face about the national debt and the budget. They have been distorting the truth about the very charts you all post every night. They are on your show and lie about Obama's spending and no one says a word to correct them. Enabling them to lie on your program is going to kill the rights chances. If you can't get it right, who will? Fox. Please, don't accept the BS they throw on your show... I'M DISGUSTED.
Dear Mr. Matthews –
I wanted to thank you for that interesting interview with Mr. Gingrich.
While Mr. Gingrich did not perform in any way that changed my opinion of him – and in the spirit of politeness I’ll say only that my opinion is not favorable, he did say something that was very profound.
My guess is that he had no intention of his statement being profound, but when he said that President Obama, the man at the head of the administration that killed Bin Laden, passed health reform (something many “pro’s” couldn’t do), passed Wall Street Reform (something that many “pro’s” wouldn’t do) and passed what is probably at least a hundred other pieces of important legislation all while fighting total Republican obstruction,… well,…. if this is the mark of, as Newt said, an “Amateur” … where, as Dan Rather might say, where can we get more dogs that hunt like that!?!
Leave it to Newt to say something that could,…”choke a buzzard.”
Anyway, thanks for sitting him down in front of us for another good look.
Think you might be able to get Karl Rove next?
P.S. I’m about half way through “Elusive Hero” … and Loving every minute of it.
Regards,
Tim Menard
Too bad most of the stuff you listed about the president accomplishments are distorted at best. Healthcare lobbyists wrote the bill got waterdowned to nothing and then the president dropped off the radar when the fight came. You have some strange ideas about real financial reform as well, as in non-existent and or meaningless(again with lobbyists). You cant blame Republicans for obstructionism when there is no opposing force. Dont forget the sweet deal the president offered the republicans during the debt debacle. Resigned Patriot Act, offered SS Medicare/medicaid on a platter, Bush tax cuts, NDAA, Credit Card Consumer Protection(lobbyists,watered down to nothing), and on.
Tim, I have to agree with you. It was hilarious interview. Every time Newt tried to haul out the talking points we hear over and over again Chris just cut him off saying come on buddy you and I both know that's crap and Newt having respect for Chris would smile almost laughing. This is something we rarely see these days. People just want to see the same old partisan bickering because they're so polarized. The same old barking and talking points repeated over and over ad nauseum get us nowhere. It makes me sick. It was great to see Chris repeatedly call Newt on his BS and Newton knowingly smile because he knew it was BS!
The Republicans know Obama is more like Reagan than anyone since Reagan and they just can't stand it. They just want to win for winning sake. They know they have a horrible economic policy and the Tea Partiers have ruined their Party and are scrambling to put it back together.
obama is just like reagan in the same sense that they are merely puppets to there investors. in no way has obama limited government at all. get real
....... Is it just me .... or does it seem like Newt is the kind of guy who brings his own chair ... to a game of musical chairs ....
Tim Menard
Until the media begins calling the Republicans out for the lies, nothing changes. You are Journalist, like Walter Cronkite, Tim Russert, but for fear that this person won't come on again, an important opportunity is missed.
You call them out when they are not on your show please have the deceny to call them out when they are being interviewed
Mark Halprin did the exact same thing. This type of silence harms every working family in the country, or elderly and those in search of the truth.
I am so disgusted with the piss poor pseudo-journalism of Chris Matthews, David
Gregory, Dylan Ratigan AND Rachel Maddow! I will be so glad when Current TV
has full news coverage on their network... I am soooooooooooooooo sick of these
closet REPUBLICANS!
OK,.. How high do you have to be for this one??
I'm thinking, really, really high...
Dwight Eisenhower?? BWAH HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
""In a wide-ranging interview in which Gingrich compared Romney to Dwight Eisenhower at one point,..""
That was something. Some nerve. Matthews took the comparison and stomped it in the ground
"“It didn’t work. I wouldn’t have won it on that issue. It doesn’t work in general.”"
Right. It worked WITH REPUBLICANS. IN SOUTH CAROLINA. Of course it will work in the general.
I think both of them demonstrated they have chutzpah. Chris Matthews has often ripped Gingrigh a new ---hole. Often. Amazing he had the balls to invite him on. Amazing that Gingrich accepted.
One of Gingrich's lines about Romney really got to me "he looked me in the eyes and ran over me" Hard core.
Gingrich likened Romney to Ike...
Worse, Chris compared Gingrich to a black mamba...
Anyone who knows reptiles realizes the Newt is a puff adder.
Don't give up yet, Newt! Don't do it!! Don't let them win!!
You are the only one left who can save us...You, Newton P. Gingrich, are the only one who really knows...and the only one willing to tell the truth about what you know...You—you grandiloquent hunk of world-historical majesty, you—are the only chance we have, the last chance we have...the last chance....to save us...
...FROM THE PENGUINS!!!!
Only you, Newt, know what those slimy, stomach-sliding bastards are actually up to!!...You're on to them, Newt, you're on to them, and they know it, too!!...You, of all people, Newton P., know the barbarity these foul fowls are fully capable of! And their vicious, boo-boo inducing attack on you is only the start, the first leg—or first waddle, if you will—of their merciless, full-scale offensive against America and everything it holds precious!!!
Only you know the true extent of their terroristic perfidy, their outrageous, jaw-dropping contempt for patriotic values, their corrosive, Frenchified maneuvers against traditional morality, and their shocking, stupefying ultimate objective of destroying both the Family and the Capitalist Order, all in one fell blow!...And that's not even mentioning their disgusting, dissolute lifestyle choices...Their whole European-socialist-tending, homosexual-leaning, gay-marriage-loving, tuxedo-wearing assault on America must stop!!... it must stop now!!
and only you can do it, Newt
It's you and only you, Newton P., who understands the true, acute, dire if not desperate need now—and I mean right now!—for an American moon colony. It's you and only you who knows that this is the only way, the only chance we really have to save American values before they are utterly and irretrievably snuffed out by their fatal, flippered onslaught.
And that's why they attacked you!!!!
How clever it was of you, too, to make those sly, surreptitious stops at all the majors zoos—those toxic dens of pinko iniquity—across the whole nation on your brave and undaunted campaign for America, just so you could keep a knowing, reconnaissance eye on their dastardly doings....
Keep on it, Newton! Don't give up on us now! Only you can do it! Don't forget the great, irreplaceable role that History has preordained for you!
Rejoin the battle, take on these depraved, amoral brutes, as only you can, Newton, before it's too late, before the black-and-white tide sweeps across America once and forever, leaving their fetid, oozy scum covering the whole of this once great Nation!!
To paraphrase Richard Wagner's famous Flying Penguin Overture: It ain't over 'til the fat boy chortles....
Don't let them get the last laugh, Newt!
DON'T LET THE PENGUINS WIN!!!
Gingrich forgives Romney: He 'did what he had to do to become the nominee' - Newt just gave another line for an ad.
chris i love your show,but please could you let your guests'give thier answers to your questions before you start talking again?you make your show very confussing!