ABC News To Air Interview With Gingrich’s Second Ex

Newt Gingrich is starting to surge in South Carolina.

Latest poll results show the former Speaker of the House closing in on frontrunner Mitt Romney, with 23 percent of potential voters throwing their support behind Newt Gingrich, compared to 33 percent for Romney.

While voters in the Palmetto State are getting ready to vote in their state’s primary Saturday, ABC News is preparing to air an interview that at least one online news site has called “explosive.”

ABC’s chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross sat down with Marianne Gingrich, Newt’s second ex-wife, and ABC has scheduled the interview to air Thursday during “Nightline.” Not much has been released regarding the interview’s content, save for one of Marianne’s recollections about what she says Newt told her about his current wife, Callista.

“I just stared at him,” Marianne said. “And he said, ‘Callista doesn’t care what I do.'”

The Drudge Report is reporting that Marianne’s “explosive revelations are set to rock the trail.”

Newt Gingrich’s adult daughters are coming to their father’s defense. The Gingrich campaign released a “Memo to ABC News Leadership” from Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Cushman, Newt’s daughters from his first marriage.

In the statement, the daughters refer to the failure of a marriage being a “terrible and emotional experience for everyone involved.”

“Anyone who has had that experience understands it is a personal tragedy filled with regrets, and sometimes differing memories of events,” the statement said. “We will not say anything negative about our father’s ex-wife. He has said before, privately and publicly, that he regrets any pain he may have caused in the past to people he loves.”

His daughters also question the timing of the release of the interview, continuing, “ABC News or other campaigns may want to talk about the past, just days before an important primary election. But Newt is going to talk to the people of South Carolina about the future- about job creation, lower taxes, and about who can defeat Barack Obama by providing the sharpest contrast to his damaging, extreme liberalism. We are confident this is the conversation the people of South Carolina are interested in having.”

The Brian Ross exclusive interivew with Marianne Gingrich is scheduled to air Thursday on “Nightline” at 10:35 p.m.