Yes, I do think that Newt Gingrich’s campaign will go down as one of the worst – if not the worst — in American political history. It now turns out he had a SECOND whopping line of credit at the jewlery store Tiffany’s.
Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign acknowledged today that Gingrich had a second line of credit at high-end jewelry store Tiffany’s for as much as $1 million.
As first reported by the Washington Post, Joe DeSantis, spokesman for the Gingrich campaign, said Gingrich’s personal financial disclosure filing due 30 days after his declared candidacy will reveal “the Gingriches had a $500,000 to $1 million line of credit at Tiffany’s, that it has zero balance, and it has been closed.”
DeSantis said all debts to Tiffany’s had been paid and offered no information regarding when the line of credit was obtained, when it was closed, or what it was used to purchase.
Sources told ABC News the Gingrich campaign was worried about what the next filing would reveal. The Gingrich campaign asked for a 45 day extension on the personal financial disclosure filing from the FEC which lasts until July 25. The filing will encompass personal financial disclosures since June 2010.
Reports of Gingrich’s first line of credit with Tiffany’s emerged on May 17, six days after Gingrich announced his candidacy via Twitter.
Gingrich defended the Tiffany’s account he and his wife held on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on May 22, saying they are “very frugal.”
That’s true.
Just because someone has two mega credit lines at Tiffany’s doesn’t mean they are not frugal and don’t spend money. Hey, if I ate six pizzas and said I was on a diet, my saying I was on a diet would make it so, wouldn’t it?
Perhaps this should be Gingrich’s campaign song — this song from a Broadway smash (performed here by two understudies who were not in the original cast):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuWoJKeidi8&feature=related
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.