Republican Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich angrily criticized the media for focusing on his personal life at the outset of Thursday’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, disputing allegations made by his ex-wife in an interview that he had pressed her for an “open marriage.”
Marianne Gingrich’s interview with ABC News was the subject of the first question at the debate sponsored by CNN. Asked if he would like to respond to her claims about their marriage, Gingrich replied, “No, but I will.” But first, he lashed out at CNN’s John King, the debate’s sole moderator.
“The destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office,” Gingrich declared. “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that.”
Gingrich denied his ex-wife’s claim that he had asked for an “open marriage” during the 1990s amid an affair with his current wife, Callista, calling the story “false.”
“Every person in here knows personal pain,” Gingrich declared. “Every person in here has had someone close to them go though painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before a primary a significant question in a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”
His Republican rivals declined to criticize Gingrich on stage, with Mitt Romney saying it was time to get onto “real issues.” But both Romney and Ron Paul went out of their way to emphasize their own stable marriages in contrast to Gingrich’s history of marital strife.
