'We make decisions as a couple, but in the end, I take full responsibility,' Gingrich said. Gingrich demands NBC apology

Newt Gingrich lashed out at NBC News Wednesday night, demanding the network apologize to his wife Callista for a report that put the blame largely on her for prompting the mass resignation of his campaign staff last week.

“I believe NBC owes Callista an apology, because the fact is my campaign is my campaign,” Gingrich told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren. “Yes, we make decisions as a couple, but in the end, I take full responsibility. And I think the program this morning was totally irresponsible, and personally reprehensible, and the kind of thing that makes it hard to get decent people to run for public office.”


Gingrich also hit back against all the former aides who have been airing grievances to reporters.

“These were supposed to be professionals who we were paying, who supposedly had some sense of confidentiality, and who promptly… did some back-stabbing in a way that I just found amazing,” Gingrich said.

Comparing his marriage to Ronald Reagan’s, Gingrich said former aides couldn’t handle working for a candidate whose wife had a seat at the table.

“Callista and I have a very similar relationship to Nancy and Ronnie Reagan,” he said. “People blamed Nancy Reagan for things that Ronald Reagan did. … The fact is, we are partners in thinking a lot of things through. … I think that unnerves some of the consultants who think they ought to own everything, they ought to control everything, and they resented the idea that they had to have the two of us actually talk with them about things like our schedule. There’s a fundamental difference between the modern world, where I think couples try to work together, and some of the consultants, who I think frankly had no idea about how to deal with a couple who cared together about their lives.”

And echoing comments he made earlier in the day on “Fox & Friends,” Gingrich said his departed staffers just didn’t understand the importance of ideas like those contained in his new book, “A Nation Like No Other.”

“Some of these consultants didn’t understand why that mattered to a campaign, and yet, I would say the heart and soul of America is what this is about,” he said.

In his earlier interview, Gingrich had stressed that much of his longtime staff is still in place, and implied that longtime spokesman Rick Tyler was the only one he was sorry to see resign.

“The only person that I really regret losing was, in fact, somebody who was with us a long time,” Gingrich said. “Everybody else was an outside consultant. All of my core team, the people who were with me over 10 years, with the exception of one person, all of them are still here.”