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The woman who married former House Speaker Newt Gingrich after cheating wuth him while he was married to his second wife says that former CIA Director David Petraeus' extramarital affair is "sad" and "painful" for his family.

"I think it's personally very sad for he and his family," Callista Gingrich told ABC's Barbara Walters on Monday. "I think he did the right thing by resigning. But this is painful and they'll have to work together through this as a family. And that will take some time."

The former House Speaker pointed out that Petraeus would have been in an "impossible situation" if he had tried to stay on as director of the CIA.

"This man served 37 years," he pointed out. "We need to remember, he was the key to winning in Iraq. If he had not turned around the surge, we would have literally lost the war. He was the key to giving a fighting chance in Afghanistan. He is a brilliant, very hard-working person. And I hope he and his family can work through this."

Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, revealed to Esquire in 2010 how the former speaker had presented his first wife with the terms of their divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from surgery for uterine cancer in 1980.

Rumors about Gingrich’s fondness for oral sex with other women have circulated for some time. A 1995 Vanity Fair profile explained how Anne Manning had claimed she had been intimate with him.

In 1999, over the Mother’s Day weekend and on the same day his second wife had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Gingrich informed her he had found someone else.

In fact, he had reportedly been having an affair with Callista Bisek for six years.

Gingrich divorced his second wife in 2000 and married Callista that same year.

In 2011, the then-Republican presidential candidate suggested to CBN's David Brody that he had strayed from his marriages because he felt so "passionately" about the country.

"There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate," he explained.

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The wife of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday said that her husband and sons had not joined the U.S. military but had found "different ways of serving" by going on religious missions as part of their obligation to the Mormon church.

During an interview on ABC's The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked Ann Romney how she would explain to the families of fallen soldiers why her husband and sons had not served their country.

"When I read about your husband, what I had read -- and maybe you can correct this -- is that the reason he didn't serve in Vietnam was because it was against the religion," Goldberg said.

"That's not correct," Ann Romney insisted. "He was serving his mission, and my five sons have also served missions. None served in the military, but I do have one son that feels that he's giving back to his country in a significant way where he is now a doctor and he is taking care of veterans."

"So, you know, we find different ways of serving," she added. "And my husband and my five boys did serve missions, did not serve in the military."

The candidate's wife explained that Mormon missions were like military service in that "you're going outside of yourself, you're working and you're helping others. And it changes you. And are we so grateful in this country for those people -- men and women -- that are volunteering, they're sacrificing their life for us, and we cannot forget that or we have to acknowledge that always."

"So, when you're facing these mothers whose children have not come back, how will you explain to them that your sons haven't gone?" Goldberg pressed. "Will you talk about the missions they've gone on?"

"I would say it's probably the hardest thing that a president and a first lady probably do is to comfort those that have lost a love one and have gone in harm's way," Ann Romney replied, not directly answering the question. "It is an amazing country, we have the most extraordinary fighting men and women, and we have to be so grateful for them. Of course, it's hard, and I don't think that any of us can understand the sacrifice that are being made by families."

Mitt Romney announced earlier this week that he had canceled his Thursday appearance on The View due to "scheduling problems."

In a secretly-recorded video released by Mother Jones last month, the former Massachusetts governor told wealthy donors that going on The View was a “high-risk” proposition because the “sharp-tongued” co-hosts were not conservative enough.

“Apparently the idea of sitting next to Whoopi Goldberg was just a little too intimidating,” media critic Howard Kurtz told Daily Download founder Lauren Ashburn. “Doesn’t this make Romney look like he’s avoiding a confrontation with the ladies of The View? He said he would go.”

“It opens him up to the argument that, how is he going to negotiate with Vladimir Putin if he’s afraid of sitting down with Whoopi Goldberg?” Kurtz continued. “When he agreed to go on, he was down in the polls. And now: Bye, bye, Barbara.”

(h/t: Mediaite)

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Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Thursday said that Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke was wrong to want contraception to be covered by her health insurance, referring to the medication as "lifestyle help."

In a statement on his website over the weekend, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said he “sincerely” apologized to Fluke, who he had called a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she testified before Congress about the need for contraception coverage at colleges and universities, even if they are owned by religious institutions.

Appearing on ABC's The View on Thursday, O'Reilly agreed that Limbaugh's choice of words had been "inappropriate."

"The bigger issue is the entitlement state versus Ms. Fluck's [sic] opinion that she is owed a certain amount of lifestyle help," O'Reilly remarked.

Hosts Barbara Walters and Joy Behar pointed out that drugs to treat erectile dysfunction, like Viagra and Levitra, were covered by most insurance companies.

"The Centers for Disease Control basically categories things, and they say this is a malady, this is a medical condition and this isn't," O'Reilly explained. "And so Viagra comes under the government's guidelines for medical condition. Contraception doesn't. So look, I don't care. Doesn't matter to me."

"It's in motion now that if you need birth control and you go to a federal clinic, you get it," he continued. "So there really isn't any problem, you can get it. And then if you don't want to drive down to the clinic, you can go to Walmart or you can go to Target and get it for $9 a month. So, to insert this into a giant Obamacare bill seems to be unnecessary to me."

"So do you consider a vasectomy a health issue then?" Behar asked. "Because that's covered."

"I don't consider anything anything," O'Reilly grumbled. "I'm not a doctor. I don't know."

(H/T: The Huffington Post)

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In an interview set to air Friday, ABC's Barbara Walters tried and failed to pull President Barack Obama into a debate with Sarah Palin.

"You may have heard that Sarah Palin told me just last week that she could beat you if she ran," Walters told Obama. "Could she?"

"You know, I don't speculate on what's going to happen two years from now," Obama replied.

"You will not tell me that you can beat Sarah Palin?" Walters pressed.

"What I'm saying is I don't think about Sarah Palin," the president confessed.

"Obviously Sarah Palin has a strong base of support in the Republican Party and I respect those skills," Obama continued. "But I spend most of my time right now on how I can be the best possible president. And my attitude has always been, from the day I started this job that if I do a good job and if I'm delivering for the American people the politics will take care of itself."

"If I falter and the American people are dissatisfied, then I'll have problems," he said.

But Obama didn't convince Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos. "I don't think the president's telling the entire truth there," Stephanopoulos told ABC's Robin Roberts following a clip of the Obama interview. "He thinks a little bit about Sarah Palin."

Walters had gotten the debate started in an interview with Palin that aired earlier in the week.

"If you ran for president, could you beat Barack Obama?" Walters asked Palin.

"I believe so," Palin admitted.

While Palin told Walters she was undecided about whether to run in 2012, the British newspaper Guardian reported Sunday that her staff has been scouting for office space in Iowa.

"In the course of making arrangements for that tour, two aides organising Palin's visit to Des Moines on November 27 told locals they were looking into office space and other logistical needs for the coming year," the Guardian observed.

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From Think Progress -- ABC Panelists Criticize Ailes’ Evasion Of Why Fox News Cut Away From Obama-House GOP Conversation:

Guest host Barbara Walters cut off the conversation though, since the show was over. However, discussion on the topic then continued in the green room, even though Ailes wasn’t present. Both Huffington and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman criticized the network for its hypocrisy:

HUFFINGTON: Their framing of the President is that he’s radical, that he’s taking us down a dark, fascist or Bolshevik future — depending on the day. And there he was, rational, charming, and in full command of his facts. So the narrative fell apart and so the cameras stopped showing what was happening.

KRUGMAN: Yeah, I mean it’s — I thought it was actually quite funny except it has real consequences. There you have Roger Ailes, with this powerful, popular news network, whining about how the media are unfair to Republicans. I mean, he is a powerful person in the media — and of course, you know, “Fair and Balanced” is truly Orwellian and we know that. So it’s clear that Fox — I felt like yelling to him, “you can’t handle the truth,” because that was what was actually happening on the Fox coverage.

I wonder where Ailes and Walters were for this after the show segment. And of course George Will decided to defend Ailes and Fox News saying that the media we have now is better than what we had back when there were just three networks to choose from. Not without some push back from Huffington and Krugman. And of course Will feigns ignorance on just how bad Glenn Beck's show is by claiming he never watches it. I highly doubt George Will doesn't actually know just how bad Glenn Beck's show is. That just gives him an easy out to pretend he doesn't.

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Why ABC News thought bringing in the CEO of a rival network as a pundit was a good idea is beyond me but one of the bright spots was getting to watch Paul Krugman call out Ailes to his face. Krugman hits Ailes for Fox's 'deliberate misinformation' on the health care bill and doing their part to make sure that the general public does not know what is in it.

WILL: So I don't think that when a man gets up and gives a speech full of cognitive dissonance, saying Washington is corrupt, Washington is annoying (ph), Washington is tiresome, Washington is dysfunctional, and Washington should have a much bigger role in American life, I think that -- that breeds, you might say, a kind of distrust and cynicism.

WALTERS: (inaudible) slash and burn....

KRUGMAN: If I can just -- you know, what bothers me is not the nasty language. Glenn Beck doesn't, you know, it's not -- what bothers me is the fact that people are not getting informed, that we are going through major debates on crucial policy issues; the public is not learning about them. And you know, you can say, well, they can read the New York Times, which will tell them what they need to know, but you know, most people don't. They don't read it thoroughly. They get -- on this health care thing, I'm a little obsessed with it, because it's a key issue for me. People did not know what was in the plan, and some of that was just poor reporting, some of it was deliberate misinformation. I have here in front of me when President Obama said, you know, why -- he said rhetorically, why aren't we going to do a health care plan like the Europeans have, with a government-run program, and then proceeds to explain whey he's different. On Fox News, what appeared was a clipped quote, "why don't we have a European-style health care plan?" Right, deliberate misinformation.

All of that has contributed to a situation where the public...

AILES: Wait a minute, wait a minute...

KRUGMAN: I can show you the clip, and you can...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: The American people are not stupid...

KRUGMAN: No, they're not stupid. They are uninformed.

AILES: If you say -- if (inaudible) words are in the Constitution, if the founding fathers managed -- they didn't need 2,000 pages of lawyers to hide things, then tell, then tell...

KRUGMAN: Oh, come on. Legislation always is long.

AILES: ... then tell people it's an emergency that we get it, but it won't go into effect for three years. So you don't have time to read it, you...

(CROSSTALK)

KRUGMAN: People, again, this was a plan that is -- it's actually a Republican plan. It's Mitt Romney's health care plan. People were led to believe that it was socialism. That's -- and that was deliberate. That wasn't just poor reporting.

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Senator-elect Scott Brown is using his new found fame to call on Fox's premiere reality TV show to give his daughter one more chance. Ayla Brown was eliminated as a semi-finalist in American Idol's 2005 season. Judge Simon Cowell called Brown's performance "robotic and empty."

"I would love for him to hear her again," said her father told ABC's Barbara Walters Sunday.

"You're asking him to please give her another chance?" asked Walters.

"I would love it," he said. "There is life after 'Idol.' She respects him greatly, about his critiquing. If you listen to what he says, he was right."

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November 17, 2009 ABC Good Morning America