Gingrich added that critics like himself 'need to get over it.' Newt: Like NFL refs, Obama 'not real'

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday that President Barack Obama is a “part-time president” and compared him to the NFL’s replacement referees, but added that Obama critics like himself “need to get over it and understand this is who is president.”

“He really is like the substitute referees in the sense that he’s not a real president. He doesn’t do anything that presidents do, he doesn’t worry about any of the things the presidents do,” Gingrich said on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” “But he has the White House. He has enormous power. And he’ll go down in history as the president, and I suspect that he’s pretty contemptuous of the rest of us.”


( Also on POLITICO: Gingrich appears on POLITICO LIVE)

The first three weeks of the NFL season have been marred by a series of questionable calls by the referees, who have replaced the league’s locked-out union referees — most recently on Monday night, when what appeared to be a game-ending interception by the Green Bay Packers was ruled a game-winning touchdown for the Seattle Seahawks. Since then, politicians including President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, have weighed in.

Gingrich, a former Republican presidential candidate, also called Obama the “perfect president” for the “age of false celebrity-hood,” and he contrasted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with the president.

“Hillary Clinton is a serious person. Barack Obama is an ambitious person. They’re very different personalities. Hillary Clinton gets up every day thinking about public policy. Barack Obama gets up everyday thinking about Barack Obama,” Gingrich said.

He added: “They’re very different approaches to life. And I think those of us who are his critics need to get over it and understand this is who is president. This is a man who in the age of false-celebrity hood is sort of the perfect president because he is a false president. He is a guy who doesn’t do the president’s job.”

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