Newt Gingrich said Thursday he’d be hesitant to acknowledge a Hillary Clinton victory next month, defending Donald Trump’s refusal to say he would accept the results of the presidential election.
“I’d be a little bit cautious about automatically accepting that Hillary Clinton will be legitimately anything,” the former GOP Speaker said in an interview on “The Mike Gallagher Show.”
{mosads}”We are in the worst cycle of corruption in American history,” Gingrich said. “In many ways we resemble Venezuela and Argentina more than we do traditional America. … Now, Hillary Clinton is the personification of that corruption.”
Gingrich cited the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server for official business as proof that government integrity is disappearing. He argued that former President Richard Nixon would have served a full second term if James Comey were the FBI director in 1973.
“What Comey did was such a total, dishonest disgrace,” Gingrich added. “[It] represented for the first time I can remember in this country that the FBI have been corrupted by the political process.”
After a yearlong bureau investigation, Comey called Clinton’s handling of classified material “extremely careless” but did not recommend any criminal charges against the former secretary of State.
Gingrich pushed back on criticism of Trump’s refusal during his debate Wednesday against the Democratic nominee to say he would accept the outcome on Nov. 8.
“They had to have something to talk about because he had beaten her so badly on things like open borders,” Gingrich said of media coverage of Trump’s performance.
Trump on Thursday declared, “I will totally accept the result of this great and historic presidential election — If I win.”
“I would accept a clear election result, but I would also reserve my right to consent or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result,” Trump said during a rally in Dayton, Ohio.
Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, leads Trump by about 6 points in the latest RealClearPolitics average of national polls.