Gingrich On Wife #1: She's Not Young Or Pretty Enough To Be The First Lady

More damaging news about "defender of marriage" Newt Gingrich.

A confidant of the former House speaker also told CNN that Gingrich said he dumped Jackie Battley — his one-time high school geometry teacher — in 1980 because she wasn’t “young enough or pretty enough” to be First Lady. On his campaign website, he denies the much-retold story that he served his first wife divorce papers in the hospital where she had just had cancer surgery. “It was (Jackie Battley) that requested the divorce, not Newt, and it was months before the hospital visit in question,” the campaign website says. But newly revealed 30-year-old court papers posted on CNN’s website appear to contradict that. In the papers, Battley asks the judge to reject her husband’s request for a divorce. “Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time,” her petition said.

But wait, it gets worse.

CNN interviewed Newt Gingrich’s former pal and early congressional campaign treasurer Leonard Carter, who said their friendship ended over the ambitious pol’s callous treatment of his wife. He said Gingrich initially refused to pay alimony — a claim supported by the court papers — and a church had to launch a food drive for Battley and her two daughters. When Gingrich left Battley, he was seeing a young congressional aide, Marianne Ginther, whom he married in 1981. He divorced her 19 years later after an affair with another young congressional aide, Callista Bisek, who is now his third wife and main campaign strategist.