Yesterday while interviewed by NPR, the former House speaker said that Donald Trump wasn’t really serious about his promise to drain the swamp. “I’m told he now just disclaims that,” Gingrich told Morning Edition. “He now says it was cute, but he doesn’t want to use it anymore.” But now Gingrich is walking back his claim. He tweeted today, “I goofed. Draining the swamp is in, @realDonaldTrump is going to do it, and the alligators should be worried.” Trump himself sub-tweeted Gingrich, reducing his prominent surrogate to the level of an anonymous “someone”:
Someone incorrectly stated that the phrase "DRAIN THE SWAMP" was no longer being used by me. Actually, we will always be trying to DTS.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016
Former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley famously wrote in 1988, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” It looks like Gingrich’s sin was committing a Kinsley Gaffe.