"I do not believe anybody including Trump can tell you what a Trump presidency would be like because he won’t know," Newt Gingrich says. | AP Photo Newt in February: 'Donald Trump's not a conservative'

Donald Trump is "not a conservative," speaks at a "fourth-grade level" and as a candidate for the Republican nomination has successfully "somehow figured out some weird combination of the Kardashians," Newt Gingrich said at a closed-door meeting in late February, according to audio obtained by ProPublica published late Wednesday.

Speaking to the Republican State Leadership Committee on Feb. 29 in Washington, Gingrich remarked that Trump "talks at the lowest level of any candidate in either party, not because he’s stupid" but rather "because he knows if you talk a fourth-grade level everybody can understand you."


Gingrich, who on Wednesday met with Trump in Indiana as one of the final candidates under consideration to be the presumptive nominee's running mate, suggested that the Manhattan businessman would have a difficult time flipping the switch to talking about his policies. ProPublica said it obtained the recording through the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, which obtained it through someone present at the meeting.

"How we make the transition from, you know, language for fourth graders to real policy, I don’t know," Gingrich continued. Trump has frequently talked up the ability for his vice president to have experience navigating Washington as an insider, rather than have another outsider.

Gingrich also said, "I do not believe anybody including Trump can tell you what a Trump presidency would be like because he won’t know."

Referring to National Review's anti-Trump issue titled "Against Trump," Gingrich said the publication was "right," adding, "Donald Trump’s not a conservative."

"I had a very sophisticated medical doctor in Des Moines write me two days ago and say he sent a thousand dollar check to Trump," Gingrich said in the recording. "And I wrote back and said, ‘What are you doing?’