Newt Gingrich dismisses Donald Trump's alleged sexual assault as a "bad airplane flight"

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — one of Donald Trump's most fervent supporters — stepped in a giant pile of manure Thursday morning when he sought to minimize a woman's accusation that Trump sexually assaulted her on an airplane.

"When the New York Times goes back over 30 years to find somebody who had a bad airplane flight, that's the — that's sincere," Gingrich said on Fox Business. "This is not the Donald Trump that Callista and I know."

Gingrich was referring to a bombshell report in the New York Times published Wednesday night, in which a woman alleged that Trump "grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt" on a flight more than 30 years ago.

The report set off a waterfall of women emerging to accuse Trump of the exact type of sexual assault Trump was caught bragging about in a newly released tape from 2005.

Republicans have been responding by claiming these women either made up their stories or that they shouldn't matter because they happened long ago.

But that cuts directly into the argument the Trump campaign has sought to push — that Bill Clinton allegedly sexually assaulted women decades ago, and that somehow Hillary Clinton is at fault for enabling it.