Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)
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Claims to fame: Speaker of the House during Reagan era; adulterer; divorcé; hypocrite; creep
Moral apex: Multiple extramarital affairs & paid trysts with prostitutes. Serial divorcé.
Depends on what the definition of “is” is moment: Campaign worker Anne Manning told Vanity Fair in 1977 that she gave Newt head during his first marriage. Said Manning: “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’”
Rearranging deck chairs: Dumped first wife Jackie to marry second wife Marianne. Dumped second wife Marianne to marry third wife Callista, with whom he’d been having a five-year affair. Yet, during affair with Callista, dedicated his 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way, to Marianne, “the woman I love” and “my best friend and closest advisor.”
Height of hypocrisy: Was humping congressional aide Callista Bisek (23 years his junior) in his D.C. apartment while publicly condemning President Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Peak of compassionate conservatism: Served Jackie divorce papers while she was in hospital bed, just out of surgery for uterine cancer.
Memorable observation:
“‘Sorry about the cancer darling, but about that divorce’ delivered to his wife in a hospital doesn’t quite capture the ‘in sickness and in health’ line of the sacred marriage vows he swore to uphold.”
— Clinton Fein
“Marriage, Once,” HERO Magazine
Reprise of compassionate conservatism: After Marianne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Newt asked her for divorce. By phone. On Mother’s Day, 1999.
Fun fact #1: Co-sponsored federal Defense of Marriage Act.
Fun fact #2: His half-sister is a lesbian, LGBT-rights activist Candace Gingrich.
Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Gingrich:
I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.
— Jeremiah 23:14
