Swamp here to stay: Newt Gingrich says Trump disclaims ‘drain the swamp’

President-elect Trump’s promise to end corruption in politics has been questioned, but he is now removing that language from his platform. Trump ally Newt Gingrich told NPR in an interview that Trump was going to stop using the phrase “drain the swamp.”

Donald Trump’s desire to stop talking about draining the swamp may have pleased Newt Gingrich, a man whose first name is the name of juvenile salamanders that are found in swamps. On Wednesday, he told NPR that Trump’s promise to end corruption in politics by “draining the swamp” would no longer include that key phrase but was unclear on whether the issue would lose prominence in Trump’s presidency.

“I'm told he now just disclaims that,” Gingrich explained to NPR. “He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore.”

Many have been troubled that Trump’s promise to drain the swamp was little more than campaign rhetoric, particularly after appointing three former Goldman Sachs executives to positions in the White House, including former George Soros employee Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, and other lobbyists.

The likeliness of Trump actually draining the swamp has been questioned by both opponents and even supporters since he began appointing members of his cabinet. Nebraska Democratic Party chair and member of Bold Nebraska Jane Kleeb told RT, “Trump is essentially not draining the swamp, he is filling the swamp and flooding the swamp with oil.”

Gingrich did little to assuage those concerns, telling NPR that the phrase was “like people chanting ‘lock her up.”

Trump has never particularly cared for the phrase. At an October rally in North Carolina, he told the crowd, “‘drain the swamp’. We put it in about two days ago. I said, ‘drain the swamp’. I didn't like it. I didn't like the expression ‘drain the swamp in Washington’.”

Trump proceeded to explain that he eventually came around to liking the phrase after it started “trending all over the world.” However, Gingrich told NPR that Trump will be carrying himself in a different manner once he is made president, saying “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.”

Gingrich, who had recently tweeted about alligators being unhappy that the swamp, continued to explain “he is my leader and if he decides to drop the swamp and the alligator, I will drop the swamp and the alligator.” Whether he was referring exclusively to the actually phrasing or the concept remains to be seen.