Here's Republican Deep Thinker Newt Gingrich once again. This time the disgraced former House speaker has been tasked with explaining why Donald Trump's repeated claims he would "drain the swamp" of Washington cronyism and crookedness has turned, immediately after the election, into packing Washington with even bigger swamp monsters.
All right, Newt, we'll bite. Why is this particular campaign talking point no longer operative?
I'm told he now just disclaims that. He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore. ... I'd written what I thought was a very cute tweet about "the alligators are complaining," and somebody wrote back and said they were tired of hearing this stuff.
Got it. It's inoperative because he says it's inoperative. It's inoperative because it was intended as a "cute" talking point, but never as something he was actually going to follow up on. It's inoperative because now that the election's over some random guy on Twitter says they're tired of hearing about Washington crookedness and so now Donald Trump is going to do the exact damn opposite of what he may or may not have promised, just to make sure that one guy doesn't have to hear about it anymore.
I've noticed on a couple of fronts, like people chanting "lock her up," that he's in a different role now and maybe he feels that as president, as the next president of the United States, that he should be marginally more dignified than talking about alligators in swamps. I personally have, as a sense of humor, like the alligator and swamp language. ... I think it vividly illustrates the problem, because all the people in this city who are the alligators are going to hate the swamp being drained. And there's going to be constant fighting over it. But, you know, he is my leader and if he decides to drop the swamp and the alligator, I will drop the swamp and the alligator.
You know that feeling you get when you're working on a metaphor and it gets away from you a bit, but you can't help yourself and just keep going? Maybe the metaphor grabs you by the leg, maybe you can't pull it off but you don't want the listener to know that and so you just keep talking, trying to shake the metaphor off your calf. But metaphors have a bite strength of, like, a lot, and that sucker is holding on with everything he's got and yet the reporter just keeps looking at you like you're supposed to keep going, and you're beginning to taste blood and smell colors but you can't stop and so you soon start to ramble about how, well, maybe the metaphor is about 10 seconds away from messily severing your leg at the knee and making off with it and one half of a very nice pair of shoes but you are still absolutely devoted to your leader and if losing your leg and favorite left-side dress shoe is what leader wants then by God that is precisely what your leader will get because you've got no will or ethics of your own and you'd rather lose a leg to a rogue metaphor than take a chance on offending dear leader with an interview answer two sentences shorter than dear leader wants it to be?
Yeah. Happens all of us at one time or another. You should see Corey Lewandowski—from the neck down, he's just one big wooden stump at this point.