May 3rd, 2012

Is Gingrich calling Romney a liar?

Today CNN’s Wolf Blitzer sat down with former candidate for president Newt Gingrich to talk about the suspension of the former speaker’s campaign and the future of the GOP presidential race. A full transcript of the interview will be posted on http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2012.05.03.html;  highlights of the interview are after the jump.

Please credit all usage of the interview to CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer

EMBEDDABLE VIDEO: Gingrich talks vice presidential choices
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/05/03/exp-tsr-gingrich-vp-intv.cnn

Highlights from Interview
THIS IS A RUSH FDCH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED

BLITZER:  Looking back, first, what was the biggest mistake you made?

GINGRICH:  I think not starting very early and laying out the kind of agenda I laid out yesterday and just sticking to it and ignoring the day to day political infighting, the day to day news stories, because I think that it — the more visionary I was, the better we were doing, including being the frontrunner in December.  And the more I got sucked into the daily politics, the — the weaker we were.

BLITZER:  Do you still believe Mitt Romney is a liar?

GINGRICH:  I still believe that the Romney campaign said things that weren’t true…

BLITZER:  Forget about the Romney campaign…

GINGRICH:  — that they knew weren’t true.  And I think…

BLITZER:  Is Mitt Romney…

GINGRICH:  — the governor said…

BLITZER:  — is Mitt Romney…

GINGRICH:  — the governor said…

BLITZER:  — a liar?

GINGRICH:  — the governor said things, at times, that weren’t true.  I think — I think that’s true.

BLITZER:  So the answer is yes?

GINGRICH:  I also believe that compared to Barack Obama, I would trust Mitt Romney 100 times over.

BLITZER:  Because that reference to him yesterday is sort of a lukewarm, it wasn’t really an endorsement that you mentioned to Mitt Romney.

GINGRICH:  Well, let’s have — look, I said I’m going to campaign for him.  I said he will appoint dramatically better judges than — than the president.  He’ll do a dramatically better job creating jobs than the president.  He’ll do far more to balance the budget than the president.

I went down a pretty long list of why I think Mitt Romney is better than Barack Obama.  This is a comparative business.  And our choice isn’t Mitt Romney or Ronald Reagan.

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