Newt Gingrich: Jack Welch Conspiracy Theory on Jobs ‘Rings True’

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 to people," adding that Welch’s distrust of the president is representative of many American businessmen.

“It rings true to people," Gingrich said on NBC’s Meet the Press. "You have a president of the United States so deeply distrusted by people like Jack Welch -- who is hardly a right-winger, Welch is one of the most successful businessmen in America -- that Welch instantaneously assumes this is the Chicago machine."

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 Nyrobi 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.”

See all NJ’s Sunday show coverage | Get Sunday show coverage in your inbox