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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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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Tuesday called for President Barack Obama to apologize after actor Robert DeNiro jokingly asked if America was ready for a white first lady.

"Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white First Lady?" DeNiro wondered at an Obama fundraiser in New York on Monday.

According to a pool report, the crowd "roared" in response to DeNiro's joke. "Too soon, right?" he quipped.

At an event in Shreveport, Louisiana on Tuesday, Gingrich defended all the potential white first ladies.

"I do want to say one thing on behalf of my wife and on behalf of Karen Santorum and on behalf of Ann Romney," the former House Speaker began. "That is that I think Robert DeNiro is wrong. I think the country is ready for a new first lady. And he doesn't have to describe it in racial terms."

"These are fine ladies as is Michelle Obama, but this is not about the first lady. It's about the president, and that's where DeNiro missed the whole point. DeNiro's rich enough that he probably hasn't noticed the price of gasoline. He's successful enough that he probably doesn't notice the unemployment rate. And as a Hollywood actor, he may be shortsighted enough [that] he hasn't seen what the deficits will do to our children and our grandchildren."

Gingrich continued by calling on Obama to personally say he was sorry for DeNiro's remarks.

"What DeNiro said last night was inexcusable," he insisted. "The president should apologize for it. It was at an Obama fundraiser. It is exactly wrong. It divides the country. And if people on the left want to talk about radio talk show hosts then everybody in the country ought to hold the president accountable when somebody at his event says something that is utterly and totally unacceptable as Robert DeNiro said last night."

The Georgia Republican added: "And I call on the president to apologize for it. I have a personal preference, obviously, for Callista to be the first lady, but I tell you, I would also be very proud and very honored to have Ann Romney as the first lady, to have Karen Santorum as the first lady. I think that what DeNiro said was just beyond the pale and he should be ashamed of himself."

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What was touted as ABC's big blockbuster interview with Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne Gingrich, turned out to be more of a fizzle since the main headline to come out of it, that Gingrich had asked Marianne to have an open marriage while he was cheating on her with Callista, was already leaked well ahead of the interview airing.

I don't think Marianne Gingrich came off all that well during the interview since she basically just laughed off allegations that she might have participated in trying to solicit bribes from an arms dealer in the late nineties and strangely ABC did not push her in any way about whether there was any truth to them. I'm not quite sure why they bothered to bring up the scandal at all if they weren't going to probe into it a bit more deeply.

The one portion of the interview which I posted above that I found rather humorous was Marianne Gingrich's reaction to Newt telling her that his current wife, Callista, was going to help him become president.

ROSS: Newt Gingrich lost his power as Speaker of the House and resigned from Congress in 1998. A year later he asked for a divorce and says Marianne, began to plan his campaign to run for president with Callista by his side who is probably best known in this campaign for the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry Gingrich bought for her at Tiffany's.

GINGRICH: He did tell me once that she was going to help him become president.

ROSS: What was your reaction to that?

GINGRICH: Didn't look like help to me.

I don't think the ABC report is going to have much of an effect on the GOP South Carolina primary race but if by some miracle Gingrich would actually become their nominee, I would imagine it would do some real damage in a general election. After the audience's reaction to Gingrich attacking John King during the CNN debate, it doesn't appear those "values voters" in the South really care about infidelity one bit. They're more concerned about whether a nasty piece of work like Gingrich might be able to put that "food stamp president" Barack Obama in his place should Gingrich win the primary race and have an opportunity to debate him in the general election.

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One evangelical leader says that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is like the Italian captain whose cruise ship sank -- because the former House Speaker was sailing on his own personal love boat when he cheated on his first and second wives.

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council -- a hate group, according the the Southern Poverty Law Center -- reacted to the news on Thursday that Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, would be spilling secrets about her former marriage to ABC News.

"I think, especially in the evangelical community, they understand the issue of forgiveness," Perkins told CNN's Soledad O'Brien. "But that does not necessarily translate into endorsing for leadership."

"When you look at the captain of the Costa Concordia, the guy who abandoned his responsibility -- I mean, who's going to put him in charge of a cruise ship again? I'm not getting on that cruise ship."

Capt. Francesco Schettino told an inquest this week that he had only abandoned his sinking ship because he accidentally fell into a lifeboat.

In a video clip released by ABC News on Thursday, Marianne Gingrich claimed that she had also been abandoned because she would not agree to an "open marriage" after her husband began dating his soon-to-be third wife, Callista.

Perkins and about a hundred other Christian conservative leaders have thrown their weight behind Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News Wednesday to demand an apology from NBC News for reporting that his wife Callista was at the center of his campaign turmoil.

"I believe NBC owes Callista an apology because the fact is my campaign is my campaign," the former House Speaker told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. "Yes, we make decisions as a couple but in the end, I take full responsibility and I think the program this morning was totally irresponsible and personally reprehensible and the kind of thing that makes it hard to get decent people to run for public office."

"NBC News, as you know, is standing by its reporting," Today Show host Ann Curry told NBC's Chuck Todd Thursday.

"Well, this is misplaced anger," Todd noted. "His anger should probably be at his aides because all of the reporting on this has been about Newt Gingrich was allowing his personal issues -- whether it was actions by his wife, whether it was actions by his production company -- to somehow be prioritized over the presidential campaign. That's why these folks left. Newt Gingrich was not putting a priority on running for president and instead was more worried about making money for his production company, going on this vacation, keeping things happy at home. Nothing wrong with those things, but that's not how you win a presidency."

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Man oh man. I was wondering not long ago how long it would take for Newt Gingrich's campaign to go down in flames, but I didn't expect for it to be this soon. How bad is it when you're getting grilled in what should be friendly territory at Fox from the likes of Greta Van Susteren and you're getting hit from all sides from your own party for saying something negative about Paul Ryan's budget as he did on last weekend's Meet the Press?

Here he is on Greta's show, deciding that he's not going to comment if anyone decides to ask him -- as Greta did here -- about their Tiffany's bill:

GINGRICH: Now later on, I want you to watch this particular segment Greta.

VAN SUSTEREN: Okay.

GINGRICH: And notice I talked about jobs. I talked about the price of gasoline. I talked about all sorts of real problems for real Americans...

VAN SUSTEREN: And I brought this one up.

GINGRICH: ...that in a presidential campaign we could talk, we could bring up and I think it sort of fit in perfectly and my answer to you is I'm not commenting on stuff like that. I am perfectly happy to talk about what we need to do for America and what we need to do to help Americans, but I frankly don't want to play the gotcha' games in Washington and I'm just not going to participate. [...]

Part of running for president is that everything you ever did, every person you ever knew... name it... sooner or later somebody somewhere is going to run across it, you know and... it will show up. And I've just decided if it doesn't relate to a better future for America; if it doesn't relate to helping the American people; if it doesn't relate to solving our problems, from here on out, my answer's going to be I'm not commenting on it and then people can decide. If you want to play Trivial Pursuit, that's fine. But I'm not going to play Trivial Pursuit. I'm going to try to help this country get back on track.

I assume he'll use the same tactic when asked about those pesky little items like his adultery and divorces as well. Heaven forbid we can't have the media playing "Trivial Pursuit" with asking him if he's a huge flaming hypocrite when espousing "family values" and whether his supposed religious beliefs square with how he's lived his life. I'm sure he thinks that would be terribly unfair and has put those kind of "gotcha" questions off limits as well.