Newt Gingrich will make his first appearance with presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, on May 29 in Las Vegas.

NBC News has learned the former House speaker will attend a fundraiser for Romney at Trump Towers in Las Vegas Tuesday evening. Donald Trump will also attend.

The last time Gingrich and Romney were in Nevada together was in early February, amid a biter fight for the nomination.

Rumors broke just days before the Feb. 4 NV caucuses – and were confirmed by several news outlets -- that Trump himself would endorse Gingrich. Hours later, however, the casino mogul endorsed Romney.

A joint public event with the two former competitors may occur next month.

In his drop-out speech Wednesday, Newt Gingrich singled out one of the two primary states he won: South Carolina, whose 30-year streak of picking the eventual nominee Gingrich acknowledged he had officially ended.

“I have to thank the voters of South Carolina, and I have to apologize to them,” Gingrich said. “We will have broken their tradition of always picking the nominee. This will make me feel slightly guilty every time we go through South Carolina.”

But Palmetto State experts insist that the first-in-the-south primary state’s importance as an early presidential bellwether remains unchanged – even if the current Republican Party slogan -- “We Pick Presidents” -- is no longer completely accurate.

“Think of it as, if you’re a marketing director for a product, and you have all these slogans to sell your product,” Winthrop University political science professor Scott Huffmon pointed out. “You’ll drop that from your advertising but you’ll still stress everything else.”

He noted that South Carolina would remain the first test of candidates’ strength in the delegate-rich South.

“At last count we have something like 160 Electoral College votes, and you need 270 to win,” Huffmon said. “If you can find a Republican who can appeal to the entire South, and they’ve got almost 60 percent of all the Electoral College votes that they need to become president.”

South Carolina can still sell its primary, Huffmon added, as the place “where the presidential mettle gets tested… where you have to face the first fiery brands of Southern conservatism and see if candidates can stand up.”

State Republican Party Chairman Chad Connelly also said he didn’t think the state’s reputation would suffer as a result of its picking a candidate other than the party nominee.

“We might not have our same branding motto or whatever, but the fact that we’re an important part of the process, that hasn’t changed a bit,” Connelly said, noting that the state’s small size and relatively inexpensive media markets allow campaigns with varying amounts of resources to be competitive – something he suggested strengthens the eventual nominee.

“I think Gov. Romney will tell you that he’s a better candidate, he’s a better debater, he’s better with the people than he was before because of this whole process,” Connelly said. Romney lost South Carolina 40-28 percent to Gingrich. 

Connelly stressed that he’s not considering changing the state party’s motto any time soon, focusing more on raising money to send South Carolina volunteers to other swing states to help with Republican get-out-the-vote efforts.

And as far as Gingrich’s apology to the voters of South Carolina, at least one of his supporters says there are no hard feelings.

“He owes no one an apology,” said Allen Olsen, a former Columbia Tea Party leader and one of Gingrich’s earliest proponents in the state. “He just got beat, and I don’t think he owes South Carolina an apology. I’m just proud to support him.”

But, Olsen added, now that Romney has prevailed, he said he wished Gingrich “hadn’t come off sounding like a sore loser” in his speech Wednesday.

“I wish he would have come off and endorsed Romney and offered to work with Romney more,” Olsen said.

ARLINGTON, VA -- Newt Gingrich finally ended his presidential bid on Wednesday at a hotel just outside of the nation's capital, where he once led the Republican Party in Congress.

After a week of broadcasting his intent to suspend his campaign -- including the release of a video earlier this week thanking supporters and previewing the announcement -- Gingrich formally ended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination at an event his campaign had billed as a "press conference to announce suspension of campaign."

Benjamin Myers / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks next to his wife Callista Gingrich as he suspends his presidential campaign May 2 in Arlington, Va.

"Today, I'm suspending the campaign but suspending the campaign does not mean suspending citizenship. Callista and I are committed to be active citizens. We owe it to America. We owe it to Maggie and Robert," Gingrich said, referring to his only two grandchildren, here in his home state of Virginia.

Once bitter rival of Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee, Gingrich vowed during his 26 minute speech to do whatever possible to beat Barack Obama but came short of actually endorsing Romney.

"I'm asked sometimes is Mitt Romney conservative enough. And my answer is simple: compared to Barack Obama? You know, this is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan. This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical leftist President in American history," Gingrich said while addressing roughly 100 members of the media inside the Hilton Hotel.

Romney said in a statement: "Newt Gingrich has brought creativity and intellectual vitality to American political life.  During the course of this campaign, Newt demonstrated both eloquence and fearlessness in advancing conservative ideas. Although he long ago created an enduring place for himself in American history, I am confident that he will continue to make important contributions to our party and to the life of the nation."

Gingrich’s spokesman said an official endorsement of Romney is still to come.

The news was far from surprising, given the way the former House speaker had been openly discussing the prospect of his exiting from the race ever since he finished poorly in the Delaware primary.

After finishing nearly 30 percent behind Mitt Romney in DE -- a state Gingrich frequented leading up to the election -- the speaker basically  gave two concession speeches while campaigning in North Carolina last week. He began calling Romney the "nominee" and said it was time to "be honest about what's happening in the real world as opposed to what you would like to have happen."

Gingrich's campaign had been considered virtually dead for weeks, though the winner of the South Carolina and Georgia primaries vowed to contest the nomination all the way through the Republican convention this summer in Tampa. Gingrich had assailed Romney's conservatism, and, to boot, President Obama's campaign circulated a video this morning featuring the ex-speaker's greatest hits against Romney.

That said, the month of May is far later in the election cycle than most political observers thought Gingrich would last. After suffering missteps in the launch of his campaign, most of Gingrich's senior staff quit on him last June.

Gingrich must also still work to erase millions of debts incurred during his campaign, mostly during its tail end.

But at today’s event, the Speaker seemed cheerful and unfazed by the $4 million hole he is in. He rather spent time talking about one of his most memorable ideas from the past 10 months – his proposed moon colony.
 
“My wife has pointed out to me approximately 219 times, give or take three, that the moon colony was probably not my most clever comment in this campaign. I thought, frankly, in my role providing material for Saturday night live it was helpful but the underlying key point is real,” Gingrich joked.

Chris Keane / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at a rally on the night of the New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware primaries in Concord, North Carolina April 24, 2012.

Newt Gingrich will suspend his campaign next week, ending his pursuit of the presidency, but almost certainly not his life in the national spotlight.

NBC News learned that Gingrich will suspend his campaign on May 1, and may well endorse Mitt Romney, his nemesis throughout the primary season.

But if one thing seems unassailably true about the end of Newt Gingrich's bid for the presidency, it's that we haven't seen the end of Newt Gingrich.

The former House speaker's career has, if nothing else, been marked by its series of peaks and valleys. Gingrich ends his campaign for the Republican nomination exploring the depths of one such valley: his campaign wracked with debt, his political stature at an all-time low within the GOP, and his private business seriously threatened.

But like a cat with nine lives, throughout his career, Gingrich has shown a penchant for achieving unthinkable political resurrections. While he might have cashed in several lives during this campaign -- and had certainly spent more in his preceding political life -- it seems unthinkable that the public has seen the last of this man.

“We had an avalanche fall on us, and Newt dug himself out. And that's the story of his entire career,” said Rick Tyler, the spokesman for a pro-Gingrich super PAC. Tyler was a longtime aide to the former House speaker before having joined a mass resignation of senior staff last June -- a particular low point for the candidate and his campaign.

Those mass resignations came after a rocky rollout for Gingrich, during which he criticized a controversial budget drafted by House Republicans. Gingrich also struggled with the revelation of a six-figure line of credit he’d maintained with the jeweler Tiffany’s, and an ill-timed Greek vacation he took with his wife Callista, an omnipresent figure on the campaign trail.

His campaign was considered all but dead after June 9, 2011 -- the day of those resignations. But students of his career could just as easily draw parallels with other scenes from the Gingrich political biography, moments when it also appeared his luck had run out.

“I think there's a little bit of Richard Nixon in Newt Gingrich. His political career was pronounced dead as many times as well,” said Craig Shirley, the GOP public affairs veteran with close ties to Gingrich. Shirley, a biographer of Reagan, is currently working on a political biography of Gingrich.

“He likes the high wire in the same way that Nixon did,” Shirley said of Gingrich. “They all like the high wire, but there's some who handle it better than others.”

There are many instances when, over the last three and a half decades, Gingrich had appeared to fall out of favor with both Republicans and voters at large. There were his failed early bids for Congress in the 1970s and clashes with Republican leaders throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

His biggest political achievement came in 1994, when Gingrich led Republicans to win back a majority in the House for the first time since 1954. But his tenure was well-documented for its internal and external tumult, and led to an attempted coup toward its end. Gingrich resigned amid growing Republican anger toward his leadership following the elections of 1998 – a dramatic development used to great effect by Mitt Romney’s campaign throughout the 2012 primaries.

That resignation might have otherwise meant the end for any other political figure, but the story of Newt Gingrich has always been a story of reinvention and resurrection.

In the more than 10 years since leaving Congress, Gingrich took on the persona of a party elder. He became a commentator on FOX News, a lucrative opportunity, and made millions more through consulting and the establishment of “Newt, Inc.,” the consortium of interest groups built in his name that has pervaded Washington.

His brand had been rehabilitated sufficiently enough by 2011 to wage a credible bid for the Republican presidential nomination, but Gingrich’s campaign was marked by the same turbulence that had defined his entire career.

Gingrich soldiered on following the June resignations, only to re-emerge in late November 2011 as the top choice of Republicans in the first nominating contest in Iowa, at least according to polls. But his presidential aspirations bottomed out again after suffering an onslaught of negative advertising from the Romney campaign.

Undeterred, Gingrich rebounded again to shock Romney in the South Carolina primary – the first time a candidate had won the influential primary since its inception without continuing to become the eventual Republican nominee.

Then came the Florida primary several days later, where Romney again dispensed with the former House speaker by using a barrage of critical advertisements. It was Gingrich’s last true gasp as a candidate. He retreated to Georgia, the state he had served as a member of Congress, and hitched his candidacy to winning that state – and only – on Super Tuesday.

Even in nearby Mississippi and Alabama several weeks later, Gingrich lost those primaries to Rick Santorum. His inability to score a meaningful win fueled perceptions of Gingrich as a kind of “ghost candidate,” even though he defiantly vowed to push forward with his campaign through the August convention in Tampa, where he would conceivably challenge Romney in a messy floor fight for the nomination.

His relationship with FOX lies in tatters following the publication of a report in which Gingrich made critical comments of the network before a private crowd. More significantly, the Center for Health Transformation – the crown jewel of Gingrich’s personal empire – was forced to file for bankruptcy in the former speaker’s absence. His campaign is millions in debt, and CHT’s bankruptcy will likely cost Gingrich some personal wealth, too.

Gingrich’s path to redemption – again – is steep, possibly steeper than at any previous point in his career.

That path begins with a speech at the Tampa convention this summer meant to unify Republicans behind Romney, despite the personal animosity over time between Romney and Gingrich, said Shirley.

“Newt has the ability to arrest people because he’s interesting,” said Rick Tyler of the attributes that might help Gingrich accomplish another turnaround. “That didn’t translate into people wanting him to be president.”

Fans of the former speaker assert that it would be inconceivable for Gingrich, at the least an irrepressible gadfly in Washington, to fade from public view.

When will Americans finally see Gingrich’s final act as a public figure?

“I guess when he's getting last rites,” Shirley said.

NBC News confirms that Newt Gingrich will suspend his presidential campaign on Tuesday, May 1 in Washington, DC, a senior campaign source says.

After a four-hour meeting last night, the former House speaker has decided to end his run. Tuesday was chosen for logistical reasons so his family can come up to the area and so forth.

There is a "high likelihood" he will endorse the GOP nominee at Tuesday's event.

CRAMERTON, NC –- Newt Gingrich finally admitted Wednesday morning that Mitt Romney will be the Republican Party’s nominee for president this year.

Addressing supporters inside a local diner here following a disappointing second place finish Tuesday night in Delaware's primary, Gingrich went a step closer toward ending his presidential race this morning, after hinting at it last night during his election night speech.

RELATED: Gingrich loses again, signals exit from race

"You have to, at some point, be honest about what's happening in the real world as opposed to what you would like to have happen. Gov. Romney had a very good day yesterday,” he said. “You have to give him some credit. This guy has worked 6 years, put together a big machine and has put together a serious campaign.”

The former House speaker went on to recognize Romney –- the former Massachusetts governor who swept all 5 primaries yesterday –- as the man who will compete against President Obama in the fall.

“I do think it's pretty clear that Gov. Romney is ultimately going to be the nominee and we'll do everything we can to make sure that he is, in fact, effective, and that we as a team are effective both in winning this fall and then, frankly, in governing," Gingrich said to the roughly 75 people in attendance, noting he still believes he would be a better candidate.

Calling himself a “citizen” multiple times inside Georgio’s Restaurant, the speaker vowed to stay involved in the presidential race and admitted he is working out the details of his “transition” this week (although would not define the meaning of his transition when asked by reporters following the event).

"We're going to stay very, very active,” Gingrich promised. “But I am committed to this party. I am committed to defeating Obama. We will find ways to try to be helpful."

Gingrich will continue “campaigning” in the Tar Heel State through Friday before heading back to Washington, D.C. to attend the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday night.

BALTIMORE, MD -- Newt Gingrich considers himself a man of “really big ideas” and has used his presidential run to share them with thousands of Americans.

The former House speaker faced criticism from opponents for being “grandiose,” which prompted Gingrich to respond in January: “I accept the charge that I am grandiose and that Americans are instinctively grandiose."

While Gingrich continues fighting the increasingly uphill battle of trying to become the Republican nominee, here is a recap of some of the more fantastical ideas he has thrown out over the past 10 months of the campaign.

CREATING A MOON COLONY
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American." – Cocoa, FL 1.25.12

AP / Evan Vucci

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, center, and his wife Callista, tour the Wilheit Packaging factory in Gainesville, Ga.

DESTINY IN SPACE
“I want to restate, far from backing off, I want to restate, America has a destiny in space. It is a part of who we are. We are not going to back off from John Kennedy’s challenge and we are not going to go timidly into the night allowing the Chinese to dominate the future of space.” – Huntsville, AL 3.6.12

SEND PACKAGE TO ILLEGALS
“UPS and FedEx move twenty four million packages a day and track them in virtually real time. Over here is the federal government, the world that fails. And let me give you an example of what I’m talking about: twenty four million packages tracked while they move; eleven million illegal visitors sitting still. Or 15 million. One of my proposals is very simple. We send a package to every person who’s here illegally. When it’s delivered, we pull it up, we know exactly where they are. It’s on the computer.” – Council Bluffs, IA 11.30.11

NATIONAL SECURITY
“You think about an Iranian nuclear weapon.  You think about the dangers – to Cleveland, or to Columbus, or to Cincinnati, or to New York.   Remember what it felt like on 9/11 when 3100 Americans were killed.  Now imagine an attack where you add 2 zeros.  And it’s 300,000 dead.  Maybe a half million wounded.  This is a real danger.  This is not science fiction.  That’s why I think it’s important that we have the strongest possible national security.” – Cleveland, OH 2.8.12

CHANGE ALL OF AMERICA
“You have a bipartisan establishment that has been running this country, that has created a gigantic mess.  You have bureaucracies that are out of control, judges who think they can be dictators.  You have systems around this country.  You have laws that don’t work.  So, we have got to change not just Obama, we have got to change the entire direction of the United States of America to get it back on track and that is our obligation to these young people." – Rock Hill, SC 1.11.12

HOW TO FIX GAS PRICES
“The long-term answer is American’s producing their own energy and telling other people, ‘you may have a problem, we don’t because we can be the largest oil producer in the world by the end of this decade. Bigger than Russia, bigger than Saudi Arabia. We have vastly more resources than any other country if we use them.” – San Francisco, CA 2.25.12

AFGHANISTAN
“We’re not going to fix Afghanistan.  It’s not possible…There’s some problems where what you have to do is say, ‘You know, you’re going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life because I’m not here – you clearly don’t want to hear from me how to be unmiserable.’  And that’s what you’re going to see happen.” – Nashville, TN 2.27.12

ISLAMIC WORLD
“I believe we need to reassess every element of our relationship with the Islamic world and we need to be prepared to do whatever it takes to become economically independent and to be able to tell the truth. And American president who cannot tell the truth cannot possibly defend this country.” – Rome, GA 2.28.12

MEET WITH DEMOCRATS AND PUT THEM IN GROUPS
”Between the election and the inauguration, I will try to meet with every Democrat individually and sit down with them face to face and say look I’m going to be here for four years and what is it that you’re trying to get done that’s compatible with what I’m trying to get down. Now, they’ll break down into three groups. There will be the crazies. We won’t invite them back. There will be hardheaded guys who you can get occasionally. And there will be folks who say I’m glad we’re trying to do this together, let’s see what we can get done.” – Mobile, AL 3.10.12

PAY-PER-VIEW DEBATE
”Let me just say to the president: I will be glad to debate him anywhere, any time, and I’ll go a step further just to make it non-political. We ought to debate on pay-per-view and we ought to charge ten bucks to watch the debate, and it ought to go to a charity of our mutual choice, and it would be the largest charity fundraiser in the country this year. And the topic ought to be price of gasoline.” – Shreveport, LA 3.20.12

ATTITUDE OF MODERN WORLD
“The psychological attitude of the modern world is such that if Thomas Edison invented the electric light in the modern era, it would be reported on the network news as the candle making industry was threatened today. And somebody on the left would jump up and say this was all an excuse for killing poor people by putting electricity in their homes, and who knows what the electricity will do to them. And is this really a gamble to electrocute people? Think about -- Everything we do nowadays is negative.” – Frederick, MD 4.2.12

OBAMA/BIRTHDAY CAKE RECIPE
“If you went to somebody who was a great cook and you said ‘do you think you can bake a birthday cake’ and they said ‘sure I can bake a birthday cake,’ the odds are pretty high they’ll be able to bake a birthday cake. Now it helps to have a recipe for birthday cakes and it helps to have baked one. President Obama’s biggest challenge is, that he has exactly the wrong ideas. He belongs to an ideology that believes the way you get hard eggs is you freeze them (laughs)…. This is his whole problem with job creation.” – Dyersville, IA 12.27.11

FOOD STAMPS
“And so I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention to talk about why the African American community should demand pay checks and not be satisfied with food stamps. And I’ll go to them and I’ll explain a brand new social security opportunity for young people, which would be particularly good for African American males, because they’re the group that gets the smallest return on social security…” – Plymouth, NH 1.5.12

PAY KIDS TO WORK
“You have a very poor neighborhood. You have kids who are required under law to go to school. They have no money, they have habit of work. But what if you paid them part time in the afternoon to sit in the clerical office and greet people that came in. What if you paid them to work as the assistant librarian? And I’d pay them as early as was reasonable and practical. And then we get into the janitor thing. These letters were written saying janitorial work is really hard and really dangerous. Fine. So what if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom and you pay them?” – Des Moines, IA 12.1.11

BEAR ARMS IN OUR TRUCKS
“You can’t put a gun rack in a Volt. So, let’s be clear what this election is all about. We believe in the right to bear arms and we like to bare the arms in our truck, there.” – Peachtree City, GA 2.17.12

NOT BOW TO SAUDI KING
“If you would like to have a national American energy policy, never again bow to a Saudi king and pay $2.50 a gallon, Newt Gingrich will be your candidate.” – San Francisco, CA 2.25.12

IRAN
“We should indicate calmly and decisively that any act to close the Straits of Hormuz will be considered an act of war and we will eliminate the government of Iran.” – Knoxville, TN 3.5.12

IMMIGRATION
“I think the vast majority of them should go home. And we should be very clear about this. If you are here without any great ties to the United States and you came here illegally, you just need to leave and apply for the guest worker program from back home. Period…I do think that if you have somebody in your neighborhood who has been here for 25 years, and they belong to your church and they have three kids and two grandkids, and they have been paying taxes and working hard the entire time, it’s going to be very, very hard to get the American people to agree that we should tear up those families and expel them.” – Naples, FL 11.25.11

COURTS
“I do think it’s legitimate for the Congress and the president to address the 9th circuit’s aggressive anti-religious bias but I think that will be done with other methods. I’d ask the Congress to look seriously at either impeaching or replacing the 9th circuit.” – South El Monte, CA 1.15.12

GINGRICH TREATY
“I proposed yesterday what Chris Cox of the NRA called the Gingrich Treaty. As president, I would propose that the United States submit a treaty that says that the right to bear arms is a universal human right and that every human being on the planet should have the right to bear arms. That the Second Amendment should apply everywhere." – Raleigh, NC 4.14.12

BRAIN SCIENCE RESEARCH
"The number of things we'll learn by learning about the brain will absolutely pay for itself probably by a thousand to one or better. Literally in terms of cost to the government … This is a very big idea in an area that I don't know of any political leader who is willing to tackle that would lead to a dramatic explosion of new science that would lead directly to a better quality outcome for health which would lower the cost of healthcare which would help solve our long term budget problems and would create a huge new zone of creating American jobs. But it requires having a conversation in an area the people just aren't used to talking about politically.” – Iowa City, IA 12.14.12

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at the 2012 New York Republican State Dinner on April 19, 2012 in New York City. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance has urged Gingrich to give up his Secret Service protection, which he has had for about a month, in order to save taxpayer dollars.

NEW YORK -- Speaking before several thousand Republicans Thursday evening, Newt Gingrich said he is committed to having a “unified” party going forward and seemed to change his rhetoric towards the GOP presidential frontrunner.
 
Gingrich, giving remarks at the New York State Committee Annual Dinner, vowed that whether he or Mitt Romney become the nominee, they will work together to defeat President Obama in the fall.
 
“If I were to become the nominee, he [Romney] would work all out because it is our grandchildren’s future at stake. If he becomes the nominee, Callista and I will work out because it is our grandchildren’s future at stake,” the former House speaker promised, acknowledging he is clearly the underdog. “The fact is, we are dedicated to a unified Republican Party, winning the presidency on behalf of America’s future.”
 
Late last month, campaigning in Green Bay, Wis., Gingrich said while he is going to Tampa and is committed to party unity it was only with a caveat.
 
“We are deeply committed to going to Tampa, we are deeply committed to fighting for these ideas, that we are prepared to compete all the way, that while I am committed to party unity I think it ought to be party unity for a purpose, with a platform that matters and with ideas that enable us to say to the American people if you hire us, we’re not just anti-Obama, we are pro success for America and here are ideas that will make America successful,” he said at Kroll’s West Restaurant on March 30.
 
Thursday night’s speech at a New York City hotel seemed to take a different tone – a much more conciliatory tone from Gingrich. He reiterated he has stayed in the GOP race to articulate big themes and big issues across the country.
 
The keynote speaker at tonight’s annual dinner was potential vice presidential candidate, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.
 
After taking the stage following a bagpiper, Gingrich praised Gov. Jindal as “one of the brightest people in all of American politics.”
 
Gingrich heads to upstate New York Friday for one public event in Buffalo.