Gingrich the Newt is a very, very distant cousin of Kermit the Frog, who made his television debut with Kermit on Larry King Live, in a special Christmas broadcast on December 23, 1994. Gingrich is a parody of Representative Newt Gingrich, who was then Speaker of the US House of Representatives and a recognizable cultural figure. Hailing from the Georgia swamplands, Gingrich is Speaker of the Swamp. He claims that swamp politics is filled with slugs, leeches, mud slingers, pond scum, and belly-crawling, cold-blood reptiles. In other words, it's a lot like Washington, D.C.