First former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he didn’t think Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination. Now he doesn’t even believe she should be running for it.
Gingrich told Fox News Radio’s John Gibson that Clinton’s email situation was like Watergate occurring before Richard Nixon was even in the White House.
“In a rational world, she’d be out of the race,” Gingrich said of Clinton.
“Somebody needs to explain to her that taking risks with American’s secrets when you’re the secretary of state is not a laughing matter. It’s not a joke,” Gingrich said, referring to Clinton’s Snapchat one-liner from Monday. “And you, in fact, have put yourself in a position where, in any reasonable grounds, you shouldn’t even be a candidate.”
“I think that you do see — there’s been no effort by the attorney general to stop it. And you do see, every single week, a little more pressure being put on her. It goes a little further down the road, a few more things get unearthed,” Gingrich said. “I remember back in ’73, ’74 — this is how Watergate unfolded. It didn’t come out full-blown the way it was at the very end. It was just a day-after-day-after-day process. And in that process, once you got in the machinery, you couldn’t get out of it.”
Gingrich had previously said that if Clinton’s stock continued to plummet, other Democrats could get into the presidential race.
“Well, I think people would come out of the woodwork,” Gingrich said. “I think John Kerry, after he does his Nobel Prize acceptance speech for having sold out to Iran, will probably announce. Al Gore may come back from whatever environmental crusade he’s currently on. I think Mike Bloomberg may decide he really is a national Democrat. Jerry Brown may decide, as governor of the largest state, why not run for the fourth time for president. Elizabeth Warren might finally decide she has to save the party.”
Gingrich also warned Republicans not to discount Donald Trump’s candidacy, saying the businessman is “very formidable.”
“Anybody who thinks this guy is just a flash in the pan needs to really look at his career,” Gingrich said. “Look at, for example — how much advertising has he bought over his lifetime? More than any other candidate. How much social media does he use in the Trump empire? More than any other candidate. How much health insurance has he bought? More than any other candidate.”
“This is a guy who has been a national celebrity since the mid-1980s. He understands the game, he’s in the middle of the game, and I think he’s very formidable,” Gingrich said. “I don’t think he’s inevitably the nominee, but I think he’s much more formidable than a lot of other people believe.”
