The famously confident Republican told Leno that he was “publicly, explicitly wrong” about President Barack Obama’s reelection chances.

“Why were you so sure? Were you just watching Fox News?” Leno asked to cheers and applause.

“No, actually it’s just because all the historical models I knew said if you have this level of unemployment, this price of gasoline, this size of the deficit, that the incumbent was gonna lose,” Gingrich replied. “I give Obama a lot of credit that he defied all the probabilities and he won.”

He added that Election Day was “a very hard time for all of us,” saying he felt like the Republican Party “suddenly went off a cliff.”

Leno interjected that during the Republican primary debates, Gingrich and fellow candidates appeared to be “killing” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R).

“If I were a Democrat, I wouldn’t have to do anything here,” the host quipped. “When you guys were attacking a Republican for not paying enough tax, I thought that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. That seems hilarious to me. Did you think you were hard on him? during the primaries”

“Not enough,” Gingrich lamented. “He won the nomination. Look, if you can’t get through the nomination process, you shouldn’t be president. It’s a tough business.”

Gingrich withdrew from the Republican Party primaries after his funds ran dry, winning the majority of delegates in just two states.

Part 2: