Newt Gingrich scoffs at Steve Bannon's 'baloney' excuse for on-record interview

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) isn't buying chief strategist Stephen Bannon's excuse for the interview he gave Tuesday, in which he dished on his beef with colleagues, contradicted President Trump's stance on North Korea, and claimed that Trump officials are so nervous about changing trade policy they're "wetting themselves." The media-savvy former Breitbart editor has claimed that he thought the interview with progressive publication, The American Prospect, was off the record.

"Oh, baloney. Steve Bannon is a professional," Gingrich said in a Thursday appearance on Fox & Friends, struggling to figure out what Bannon was trying to accomplish with this interview. "Maybe, if you're senior White House adviser, it's useful not to screw it up. ... If you're senior White House adviser, you make your argument in the Oval Office, you make your argument in the chief of staff's office," Gingrich said.

In a final zinger, Gingrich brought up former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who went rogue in an interview with The New Yorker by offering some lewd remarks about Bannon. “This reminds me of Scaramucci," Gingrich said of Bannon's inteview. "You don't go off and do this stuff."

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Bannon's interviewer at The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner, said that Bannon never asked for their conversation to be off the record. Watch Gingrich's commentary below, starting around the 6:12 mark, and read Bannon's "accidentally" on the record interview at The American Prospect. Becca Stanek