Former Speaker Newt Gingrich on Wednesday compared liberals who are critical of President Trump to "slave newspapers" attacking Abraham Lincoln.

Speaking on Fox News's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Gingrich described a Civil War history professor he knows who told him Lincoln's inaugural address was criticized in similar ways to the criticism Trump faces.

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"He has made the case that the parallels between Trump's inaugural and Lincoln's inaugural and the reactions to them are amazing, Gingrich said.

“If you go and you look at how South Carolina's slave newspapers responded to Lincoln and then you look at how the left responded to Trump, they are almost verbatim parallels,” he said.

Gingrich said he believes the gap between the left and the right is getting wider and compromise wouldn’t work. He added that he doesn’t want to see a civil war, but he believes the “left is going to get crazier and crazier.”

“One side or the other wins,” he said.

Gingrich, an early supporter of Trump in the presidential campaign, has occasionally criticized the president of late.

He warned Trump to "quit stepping on himself" in the wake of his controversial response to the violence at a Charlottesville, Va., white supremacist rally last week.