Story highlights Romney and Trump had dinner in New York earlier this week

He compared the courtship to a scene in the movie "Pretty Woman"

(CNN) Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich mocked Mitt Romney on Wednesday for "sucking up" to President-elect Donald Trump as he contends for the position of secretary of state in the new administration.

"You have never, ever, in your career seen a serious adult who is wealthy, independent, been a presidential candidate, suck up at the rate that Mitt Romney is sucking up," said Gingrich -- an early Trump supporter and former 2012 GOP presidential rival of Romney's -- on Laura Ingraham's radio show Wednesday.

Gingrich compared Romney's dinner with Trump on Tuesday to "a scene in 'Pretty Women' where Richard Gere goes up to the salesman on Rodeo Drive and says, 'We need a little sucking up here.'"

"I am confident that he thinks now that Donald Trump is one of his closest friends, that they have so many things in common, that they're both such wise, brilliant people. And I'm sure last night, at an elegant three-star restaurant in New York, that Mitt was fully at home, happy to share his vision of populism, which involved a little foie gras, a certain amount of, you know, superb cooking. But was done in a populist, happy manner," Gingrich said.

Gingrich ridiculed Romney as an out-of-touch elitist, characterizing him as a bad fit for a team that defined itself in opposition to the type of GOP political establishment that the former Republican presidential nominee represents.

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