Former US House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich may have fallen down or off Donald Trump’s vice-presidential shortlist after he lambasted the billionaire for raising issues around the ethnicity of a federal judge.
Mr Gingrich, speculated to be among the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s choices for running mate, described as “inexcusable” Mr Trump’s questioning of the impartiality of US district court judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over legal actions against Trump University, because he was “Mexican.”
Mr Gingrich called his references to the judge’s ethnicity the businessman’s “worst mistake” and saying that Mr Trump needs to start acting like “a potential leader of the United States”.
The dispute threatens to undermine Mr Trump’s fragile alliance with a party leadership split by his polarising and blustering presidential campaign.
University lawsuit
The so-called Trump University, the for-profit college set up by the businessman in 2005, is being sued by former students who claim that they were defrauded out of tens of thousands of dollars and misled by signing up for courses with unqualified teachers.
Mr Trump claims that there is a conflict of interest in the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, presiding over the Trump University case in San Diego because the billionaire wants to build a wall with Mexico.
Mr Trump called Mr Gingrich’s comments “inappropriate” and said his remarks about the judge were part of his defence from questions about the legal actions.
“All I’m trying to do is figure out why I’m being treated so unfairly by a judge,” Mr Trump told Fox News.
Mr Curiel was a highly respected federal prosecutor known for taking on Mexican drug gangs before he was appointed to the San Diego county superior court in 2006 by then governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger.
President Barack Obama nominated Mr Curiel to serve as a judge on the United States district court for the Southern District of California in2011.
Mr Trump has said that he wants a political insider who has experience dealing with the US Congress to be his vice-presidential pick, and Mr Gingrich carries the right qualifications – he served in Congress from 1979 to 1999, was speaker for four years, and is a favourite of conservatives.
He came fourth in the 2012 Republican presidential primary and later endorsed nominee Mitt Romney. The former Georgia congressman is also said to have been instrumental in pushing top Republicans to support the businessman as the party’s standard-bearer.
Other possible running mates linked to Mr Trump are US senator Bob Corker, chairman of the powerful senate foreign relations committee, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a military veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the youngest member of the senate.
