CNN’s John King — blasted by Newt Gingrich during last Thursday’s South Carolina debate for asking about his former wife’s interview with ABC News — has given the Republican hopeful an on-air correction.
A fired-up Gingrich scolded King over a question about Nightline‘s sitdown with Marianne Gingrich, who claimed he had asked her for an open marriage so he could have a mistress, Callista Bisek, now the politician’s third wife. He alleged his team provided ABC with witnesses who could purportedly refute his jilted ex’s accusations.
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Despite a denial from ABC, Gingrich repeated the claim in a follow-up interview with CNN on Tuesday, saying: “Oh, that is just plain baloney. I mean, I will check with R.C. Hammond (Gingrich’s press secretary) in a minute. But if they’re saying that, they’re not being honest, because they said explicitly the opposite. So I will check with R.C., because he was briefing me on this the whole way through. We had several people prepared to be very clear and very aggressive in their dispute about that. And they weren’t interested.”
On Wednesday, the network issued a rebuttal following a concession from Team Gingrich.
“Tonight, after persistent questioning by our staff, the Gingrich campaign concedes now Speaker Gingrich was wrong — both in his debate answer, and in our interview yesterday,” King said on John King USA. “Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond says the only people the Gingrich campaign offered to ABC were his two daughters from his first marriage.”
CNN’s clip, below:
