Donald Trump is "not trying" yet in his effort to win the White House in November, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Saturday, and the Hillary Clinton campaign is "just wasting a lot of money while allowing him to think through how he wants to run the fall campaign."
"Everything the Clinton campaign is doing to suppress Trump will, in the short run, suppress Trump — because he's not trying," Gingrich, who is being vetted as a possible vice presidential candidate, said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado,
NBC News reports.
The money being spent by Clinton's operation so far "has no meaning," he said.
"The thing she's got to worry about is if he is still alive as a candidate on the first of October," Gingrich said.
Election Day is Nov. 8.
Gingrich, 73, who led the House from 1995 to 1999, said afterward that his "not trying" remarks reflected his belief that Trump was in a strong position to take on Clinton heading into the fall campaign.
"It is impossible to use paid ads to define Donald Trump," the former Georgia congressman said, according to NBC.
"The Obama people did it to [Mitt] Romney for a very deliberate reason in that they were defining Romney," he noted of the 2012 presidential candidate.
Gingrich said that Trump's campaign has "matured very rapidly" — and it should earnestly roll out its campaign in "August or September."
When asked whether he would "like" to be Trump's No. 2, he told NBC: "Listen, we'd be willing to consider it. 'Like' is a pretty strong term."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.