Former House speaker and entrenched Washington grifter Newt Gingrich took to Twitter today to honor those who perished at Pearl Harbor, 69 years ago. His elegiac remembrance: Speaking of Pearl Harbor, anyone wanna buy my crappy beach novels about it?

Writing exploitative trade paperback novels that end on cliffhangers is one of the various grifter schemes he's ginned up since the 1990s, when he had to quit Congress and make money to pay off his legal bills. Another popular scheme is pretending he'll run for president every four years and cashing in on the attention.

Anyway, here's what he tweeted today to honor dead sailors.

He's usually more subtle when he's trying to convert American tales of sacrifice and heroism into stacks of cash. And he must have realized that shortly thereafter, since he deleted the tweet.

What are these books, which he writes with other grifter-historians who can at least get basic historical structure down, like? Here's an excerpt from the Publishers' Weekly review of Pearl Harbor:

Fans of the authors will expect their trademark "alternative" ending. In this case, the Japanese attack far more vigorously and devastate a larger chunk of the U.S. Pacific fleet than they actually did. How this affects the war's outcome will be revealed in the sequel. Gingrich and Forstchen, though adept at bigger-picture issues, falter when it comes to establishing and developing characters; FDR, Churchill and Hirohito come across as caricatures who move the plot along by mouthing historically appropriate lines, while the soldier-heroes exist to explain their nation's point-of-view to the reader.

Such a grifter.

[via Wonkette, Top image via Getty]