Gingrich Tries To Pass Off Luxury Greek Cruise As Listening Tour

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Newt Gingrich’s Greek Vacation Becomes Campaign Talking Point

SHEFFIELD, Iowa –

Gingrich, whose luxury Greek vacation in June led to the mass resignations of several members of his campaign staff, now says he used the overseas trip to talk with Europeans about the banking crisis there.

The former House Speaker told a crowd in West Des Moines on Monday, that he listened to the Greek people talk about their economic woes and even noted that his observations about the state of the global economy were “very much influenced” by his Mediterranean sojourn.

“I visited Greece in June I talked to people about what they were faced with in Greece. And I listened to them and I tried to understand they face a crisis of enormous proportions,” Gingrich said. “The Greeks can’t pay off their loans at half the value. This is an enormous collapse of their quality of life in this category.”

Back in June when Gingrich went missing from the campaign trail, his aides were quiet about his whereabouts. But reporters soon discovered that Gingrich and his wife Callista were thousands of miles from the U.S. aboard the “Seabourn Odyssey,” a luxury cruise ship.

The ship left a port near Athens on May 30, making stops in Istanbul, Turkey and the Greek Islands of Mylos, Patmos, Rhodes, and Mykonos — an island famous for its nightlife . . .


read: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/newt-gingrichs-greek-vacation-becomes-campaign-talking-point/

[annabanana]

1. What? Is he trying to write it off for his taxes? Because I don't

think anyone's going to buy that he's studying diplomacy. .

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2. he did economic research

questioning the folks who cleaned his luxury liner room and waited on him . . .

"How much? You expect me to pay that?"

"Is there anyone here who knows how to make a competent martini?"