Newt Gingrich: Trump Backing Off ‘Drain the Swamp’

Now that President-elect Donald Trump is immersed in Washington, D.C., culture, he no longer wishes to use the “drain the swamp” refrain that became so popular during his campaign. “I’m told he now just disclaims that. He now says it was cute, but he doesn’t want to use it anymore,” Newt Gingrich, an informal adviser and prominent surrogate for Trump, said Wednesday on NPR’s Morning Edition. “He’s in a different role now, and maybe he feels that as president, as the next president of the United States, that he should be marginally more dignified than talking about alligators in swamps,” Gingrich further defended the president-elect’s sudden shift away from the populism on which he ran. “He is my leader, and if he decides to drop the swamp and the alligator, I will drop the swamp and the alligator.”