New York: Former House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich has described President Barack Obama’s election victory in 2008 as a "wonderful con on the American people”, and added that Obama is essentially a dishonest head of state.
"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich said in an interview with the National Review Online.
"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," the New York Daily News quoted Gingrich, as saying further.
"He was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve...He was authentically dishonest," said Gingrich, who is openly considering a bid for the White House in 2012.
Since his contentious time as Speaker, during which he famously positioned himself as Bill Clinton's chief political opponent, Gingrich has kept himself in the public eye by weighing in as a political analyst.
He has been a fierce critic of the Obama administration, calling him "the most radical President in American history”.
Gingrich's comments were made in response to a Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, called 'How Obama Thinks'.
D'Souza, president of King's College New York and a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, says Obama is "trapped in his fathers' time machine”.
Gingrich, who has visited Iowa four times this year, says he could announce his campaign for president "by March or April”.
ANI
First Published: Monday, September 13, 2010, 13:31