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BumRushDaShow

(172,716 posts)
Thu May 28, 2026, 04:49 AM Thursday

Newt Gingrich says impeaching Clinton over sex scandal was a mistake

Source: msn/The Independent

12h


Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich admitted in an interview that it was a “mistake” to impeach former President Bill Clinton over the sex scandal involving Monica Lewinsky, saying it drew attention away from Clinton’s perjury charge.

Gingrich, a Republican congressman from Georgia and Speaker of the House, led the 1998 House impeachment inquiry into Clinton, which arose after the affair between Clinton and Lewinsky became public. But reflecting on his role to “Pod Force One with Miranda Devine,” the Republican expressed remorse.

“I think it was a mistake because the real problem wasn’t Lewinsky,” Gingrich said. “The real problem was he had committed perjury in a case involving sexual harassment while he was governor.”. Gingrich was referring to Clinton’s comments stemming from a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones in 1994, when Clinton was still governor of Arkansas. In a deposition, Clinton denied Jones’s allegations, though he settled out of court with her in 1998.

Gingrich said the perjury stemming from that deposition was more serious than the affair with Lewinsky, an unpaid White House intern. “I realized we were really off course in August of that year,” Gingrich explained, saying that his two daughters had pointed out that the fallout from the scandal wasn’t worth the effort to impeach Clinton. “I realized at that point I had completely misunderstood how the culture was evolving,” Gingrich said.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/newt-gingrich-says-impeaching-clinton-over-sex-scandal-was-a-mistake/ar-AA24d74z

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Newt Gingrich says impeaching Clinton over sex scandal was a mistake (Original Post) BumRushDaShow Thursday OP
So Newt now thinks that impeaching Bill Clinton was a mistake, eh? Vogon_Glory Thursday #1
vogon for the win rampartd Thursday #3
Thank you Vogon_Glory Thursday #4
Warn Congress, yes. Plus distract and denigrate with the Clenis. Festivito Thursday #24
Yeah, Newt...got that... CTyankee Thursday #2
I'll tell you why Gingrich thinks impeaching Clinton over a sex scandal no_hypocrisy Thursday #5
+1 dalton99a Thursday #19
"Newt" Who?? AZ8theist Thursday #6
Aka the adulterous amphibian. jls4561 Thursday #7
A major scumbag in a long line of scumbags AZ8theist Friday #36
Newt ever having ANY political influence was a bigger mistake. Ferrets are Cool Thursday #8
Unfortunately he has and set the stage for our current dystopian nightmare BumRushDaShow Thursday #9
Absolutely he did! Rebl2 Thursday #23
Newt Gingrich has been a scheming scumbag oasis Thursday #10
Who really cares what Newt Gingrich thinks. hadEnuf Thursday #11
He's still directing a lot of GOP policy shit behind the scenes BumRushDaShow Thursday #14
Yeah, that would add up. hadEnuf Thursday #25
He's the architect of the current Republican party BumRushDaShow Thursday #27
Still trying to be relevant PatSeg Thursday #15
We tried telling people that when it happened. Dyedinthewoolliberal Thursday #12
The real problem was he didn't really have a problem to impeach him for. ToxMarz Thursday #13
Gingrich Icanthinkformyself Thursday #16
GFY, Newt. nt City Lights Thursday #17
It drew attention to his own fucking around. Aristus Thursday #18
POS is almost 83. Hope he joins Ken Starr and Rush Limbaugh in hell dalton99a Thursday #20
Special corner spot for all of them. Trump will be joining them soon the way Bengus81 Thursday #29
That asshat get a medical diagnosis that will be life ending soon? Bengus81 Thursday #21
He's still alive? n/t malthaussen Thursday #22
So is he now saying we can impeach a president for the crimes committed before he was in office? Hmmm Walleye Thursday #26
Newt is slimier than one can imagine. badhair77 Thursday #28
Coming from a hypocrite who was cheating Emile Thursday #30
Any headline quoting New Gringrich should start with.. mdbl Thursday #31
"Perjury" azureblue Thursday #32
Newt? Fuck off. yardwork Thursday #33
That was Newt's revenge for Richard Nixon. GreenWave Thursday #34
The real problem is the vile, lying, hate-filled politics you "championed" you evil bastard. pat_k Thursday #35
Hypocrisy is the RepubliCON #1 trait. Herself Friday #37
Trump rewarded Newt and Callista adultery delisen Friday #38

Vogon_Glory

(10,396 posts)
1. So Newt now thinks that impeaching Bill Clinton was a mistake, eh?
Thu May 28, 2026, 04:55 AM
Thursday

And we’re supposed to believe that this gem of wisdom came from hindsight and reflection?

Sorry, I don’t buy it. I find the idea that Gingrich said it to discourage current senators and congressional representatives from impeaching Orange Julius to be much more plausible.

Vogon_Glory

(10,396 posts)
4. Thank you
Thu May 28, 2026, 05:11 AM
Thursday

And for the health and well-being of the DU community, I will refrain from posting any Vogon poetry.

Festivito

(13,931 posts)
24. Warn Congress, yes. Plus distract and denigrate with the Clenis.
Thu May 28, 2026, 12:39 PM
Thursday

And for a second, he almost sounds bipartisan. BIG NOT!

no_hypocrisy

(55,513 posts)
5. I'll tell you why Gingrich thinks impeaching Clinton over a sex scandal
Thu May 28, 2026, 05:44 AM
Thursday

was a mistake: HE WAS DOING IT TOO SIMULTANOUSLY!!!

Gingrich was found in a parked van, rocking away, with Calista while he was still married to Marianne.

In 1993, while still married to Marianne, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, more than two decades his junior. Gingrich was having this affair even as he led the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury related to Clinton's own extramarital affair. Gingrich filed for divorce from Marianne in 1999, a few months after she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The marriage produced no children. On January 19, 2012, Marianne alleged in an interview on ABC's Nightline that she had declined to accept Newt's suggestion of an open marriage. Newt disputed the account.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich

BumRushDaShow

(172,716 posts)
9. Unfortunately he has and set the stage for our current dystopian nightmare
Thu May 28, 2026, 07:47 AM
Thursday

With the 1994 election, he was able to put the GOP back in control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, and because of that, they still keep him around.

oasis

(54,097 posts)
10. Newt Gingrich has been a scheming scumbag
Thu May 28, 2026, 08:09 AM
Thursday

his entire political career. He has shown the same pattern in his private life.

hadEnuf

(3,667 posts)
11. Who really cares what Newt Gingrich thinks.
Thu May 28, 2026, 08:18 AM
Thursday

He pops his head out of the sewer every once and a while.

BumRushDaShow

(172,716 posts)
14. He's still directing a lot of GOP policy shit behind the scenes
Thu May 28, 2026, 08:39 AM
Thursday

IOW, he is still working as an operative.

BumRushDaShow

(172,716 posts)
27. He's the architect of the current Republican party
Thu May 28, 2026, 12:58 PM
Thursday

Something I post often -

The Man Who Broke Politics

Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise. Now he’s reveling in his achievements.

Story by McKay Coppins
November 2018 Issue

Updated on October 17, 2018

[snip]

On June 24, 1978, Gingrich stood to address a gathering of College Republicans at a Holiday Inn near the Atlanta airport. It was a natural audience for him. At 35, he was more youthful-looking than the average congressional candidate, with fashionably robust sideburns and a cool-professor charisma that had made him one of the more popular faculty members at West Georgia College. But Gingrich had not come to deliver an academic lecture to the young activists before him—he had come to foment revolution.

“One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” he told the group. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics.” For their party to succeed, Gingrich went on, the next generation of Republicans would have to learn to “raise hell,” to stop being so “nice,” to realize that politics was, above all, a cutthroat “war for power”—and to start acting like it.

The speech received little attention at the time. Gingrich was, after all, an obscure, untenured professor whose political experience consisted of two failed congressional bids. But when, a few months later, he was finally elected to the House of Representatives on his third try, he went to Washington a man obsessed with becoming the kind of leader he had described that day in Atlanta. The GOP was then at its lowest point in modern history. Scores of Republican lawmakers had been wiped out in the aftermath of Watergate, and those who’d survived seemed, to Gingrich, sadly resigned to a “permanent minority” mind-set. “It was like death,” he recalls of the mood in the caucus. “They were morally and psychologically shattered.”

But Gingrich had a plan. The way he saw it, Republicans would never be able to take back the House as long as they kept compromising with the Democrats out of some high-minded civic desire to keep congressional business humming along. His strategy was to blow up the bipartisan coalitions that were essential to legislating, and then seize on the resulting dysfunction to wage a populist crusade against the institution of Congress itself. “His idea,” says Norm Ornstein, a political scientist who knew Gingrich at the time, “was to build toward a national election where people were so disgusted by Washington and the way it was operating that they would throw the ins out and bring the outs in.”

[snip]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/

PatSeg

(53,686 posts)
15. Still trying to be relevant
Thu May 28, 2026, 09:02 AM
Thursday

Whenever you finally forget about people like him, they pop back up to remind us they're still alive.

ToxMarz

(3,091 posts)
13. The real problem was he didn't really have a problem to impeach him for.
Thu May 28, 2026, 08:37 AM
Thursday

So he tried to manufacturer one and he will keep manufacturing alternative shoulda/woulda/coulda scenarios to placate himself as long as he's still breathing

Icanthinkformyself

(430 posts)
16. Gingrich
Thu May 28, 2026, 09:26 AM
Thursday

is the mistake, His mother should have given his sperm donor a blowjob that night, taken birth control, the after pill, had an abortion or the donor could have saved us all this headache by wearing a condom. Giving birth to this piece of shyt was the mistake. Same applies to the Convicted Felon.

dalton99a

(95,649 posts)
20. POS is almost 83. Hope he joins Ken Starr and Rush Limbaugh in hell
Thu May 28, 2026, 10:00 AM
Thursday

wherever the hell that is

Bengus81

(10,418 posts)
29. Special corner spot for all of them. Trump will be joining them soon the way
Thu May 28, 2026, 02:05 PM
Thursday

he looks.

Bengus81

(10,418 posts)
21. That asshat get a medical diagnosis that will be life ending soon?
Thu May 28, 2026, 10:03 AM
Thursday

Trying to somehow rationalize the shit he caused for years during the Clinton administration?

He Nudie...FUCK YOU!!

Walleye

(45,594 posts)
26. So is he now saying we can impeach a president for the crimes committed before he was in office? Hmmm
Thu May 28, 2026, 12:54 PM
Thursday

badhair77

(5,223 posts)
28. Newt is slimier than one can imagine.
Thu May 28, 2026, 01:51 PM
Thursday

Having oral sex with another man’s wife while he sat in a car with his kids nearby. What a prince. And yet the Evangelicals still forgive him because he was so “passionate” about his country.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/vanityfair4.html

mdbl

(8,820 posts)
31. Any headline quoting New Gringrich should start with..
Thu May 28, 2026, 02:30 PM
Thursday

"Vile, corrupt and immoral Newt Gingrich" blah blah blah

azureblue

(2,753 posts)
32. "Perjury"
Thu May 28, 2026, 03:47 PM
Thursday

What happened was, in the deposition, Bill was asked if he sex with Monica. He correctly said "No" because sex was defined as Penetration. Not Oral. SO Republicans got the definition changed to include oral and -- perjury..

Remember Bill asking what the definition of "is" is? That was a result of Republicans, in their haste to trap Bill, forgot to define what Sex is... So they hounded him to try to get him to admit to something that he didn't do, according to the legal definition..

pat_k

(14,002 posts)
35. The real problem is the vile, lying, hate-filled politics you "championed" you evil bastard.
Thu May 28, 2026, 06:32 PM
Thursday

All the right-wingnuts like him paved the way to the national horror show we must find a way out of.

Herself

(204 posts)
37. Hypocrisy is the RepubliCON #1 trait.
Fri May 29, 2026, 06:35 AM
Friday

gingrich was/is worse than Clinton ever thought of being.
The other leading gop male leading the impeachment charge was hastert. He was a pedophile and later convicted. A plural of "republiCONS" wrote letters to the judge pleading for mercy at his sentencing hearing.

The louder they "object" the more guilty they are. graham fits that bill too. Anti gay voting record to "cover" for being closeted gay boy.

delisen

(7,446 posts)
38. Trump rewarded Newt and Callista adultery
Fri May 29, 2026, 08:28 AM
Friday

Callista was appointed ambassador to the Vatican.
I suppose this was also a way of trolling the Pope.

Newt in his convoluted way is trying to absolve himself of his sins, which aren’t sins if committed by Republicans.

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