CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly quoted Newt Gingrich's comments about Jack Welch. The version below corrects the errors.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Sunday that business tycoon Jack Welch’s assessment that Friday's jobs numbers were fabricated to give President Obama a boost just weeks ahead of the election "rings true at a deeper level” than whether or not it was a conspiracy. He said Welch’s distrust of the president is representative of many American businessmen.
“It rings true at a deeper level without getting into the conspiracy" about the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report, Gingrich said on NBC’s Meet the Press. He said a jobs survey error was “plausible but irrelevant.” What’s more interesting, Gingrich said, is “you have a president of the United States so deeply distrusted by people like Jack Welch, who’s hardly a right winger. I mean, well, he’s one of the most successful businessmen in America. But Welch instantaneously assumes this is the Chicago machine. I’m just-- it’s worth looking at it.”
(RELATED: Gingrich Says Clint Eastwood May Have Been Right)
Conspiracy theories that the jobs numbers were altered or fabricated have been widely discredited, including by a pair of budget experts who appeared on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.
Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, said Welch embarrassed himself with “absolutely crazy” comments.
“There’s a number of people [who] assume that the real jobs report is somewhere in a safe in Nairobi with the president’s Kenyan birth certificate,” Gibbs said on Meet the Press. “The notion quite frankly that somebody as well respected as Jack Welch would go on television and singlehandedly embarrass himself… its incredibly dangerous.”
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