Gingrich: ‘We are in for a long, difficult couple of years’

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that “we are in for a long, difficult couple of years” in Washington after this divisive election — no matter who wins the White House.

There will be “endless” investigations into Hillary Clinton if she is elected, Gingrich told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” while he suggested a Donald Trump presidency would face fierce partisan opposition.


“I think, tragically, we have drifted into an environment where if Hillary is elected, the criminal investigations will be endless, and if Trump is elected, it will just be like Madison, Wisconsin, with Scott Walker,” said Gingrich, a Republican and one of Trump’s more prominent supporters. “The opposition of the government employee unions will be so hostile and so direct and so immediate, there will be a continuing fight over who controls the country.”

“I think that we are in for a long, difficult couple of years, maybe a decade or more, because the gap between those of us who are deeply offended by the dishonesty and the corruption and the total lack of honesty in the Clinton team,” concluded Gingrich, who as speaker of the House in the 1990s pushed to impeach President Bill Clinton.

Gingrich also offered mixed praise of Trump in his interview with Todd on Sunday.

He said the Republican nominee has “at times” been “truly a historic figure,” but allowed that the inflammatory candidate “has hurt his campaign at times by saying things that were unwise.”

“On the one hand, he's one of the most brilliant marketers I've ever seen,” Gingrich said. “And on the other hand, for a while there, he was undercutting himself. I suspect if he had not done that, he'd be ahead by 10 or 15 points right now.”