President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign trail refrain of “drain the swamp” was “cute” while it lasted—but don’t expect to hear much of it from here on out, Newt Gingrich told NPR this week.
“I’m told he now just disclaims that,” Trump ally Gingrich said to NPR‘s Rachel Martin of the phrase. “He now says it was cute, but he doesn’t want to use it anymore.”
Gingrich learned as much after posting a “drain the swamp”-inspired tweet that “somebody” reproached him for. “Somebody wrote back and said they were tired of hearing this stuff,” he said.
While Gingrich attributed the newfound distaste for the phrase to Trump’s feeling that “as the next president of the United States…he should be marginally more dignified than talking about alligators in swamps,” others pointed to a different explanation: With his cabinet choices, Trump isn’t actually draining the swamp, he’s restocking it.
As the Washington Post reported:
Indeed, Gingrich may just be confirming what many observers already feared. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put it bluntly last month: “A lot of what Mr. Trump was saying to get votes turns out to be not what he intends to do as the president of the United States.”