Story highlights
- "Drain the swamp" was a popular refrain during Trump's campaign
- But adviser Newt Gingrich says Trump "doesnt like it anymore"
(CNN)"Drain the swamp" was a refrain of Donald Trump during the presidential campaign, but Newt Gingrich says the president-elect "doesn't want to use it anymore" now that he's knee-deep in alligators.
"I'm told he now just disclaims that. He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore," Gingrich, who informally advises Trump, said Wednesday on NPR's "Morning Edition."
The former House Speaker said that he had "written what I thought was a very cute tweet about 'the alligators are complaining,'" but that "somebody wrote back and said they were tired of hearing this stuff."
During his campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to "drain the swamp" -- leading chants of the phrase at his rallies -- part of an anti-establishment, anti-Washington message that was predicated on rooting out corruption and bringing an outsider's perspective to government.
But since the election, the phrase has been turned against Trump with biting irony.
Critics have used it to assail Trump's high-level appointments of Wall Street and DC veterans, like former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary and Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Ron Klain, a former Obama administration official, tweeted, "Sure, Drain the Swamp. Congrats to all you outsiders who thought that Hillary Clinton was too establishment."
Gingrich explained away the gap between Trump's rhetoric and actions, saying that "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" -- a euphemism for the kind of establishment insiders Trump vowed to expel.
"I personally have a sense of humor, like the alligator and swamp language," Gingrich said. "I think it vividly illustrates the problem, because all the people in this city who are alligators are going to hate the swamp being drained. And there's going to be constant fighting over it."
Still, Gingrich -- a DC fixture himself -- sounded ready to drop the phrase as well. "You know, he is my leader, and if he decides to drop the swamp and the alligator, I will drop the swamp and the alligator."