If the last eight years proved anything, it is that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), needs President Donald Trump in the White House far more than the president needs him in Congress.
And now, new audio of the speaker, recorded last October as the Trump campaign and Republicans were reeling from NBC’s leaked “hot mic” recordings in which the then-candidate was heard saying some nasty stuff about women, may be the end of his brief tenure of leadership. The recording, likely taken by a conservative member of the House Republican Conference, suggests that the theories that Ryan has been trying torpedo the president’s agenda might not be quite so conspiratorial.
In the recording, which was shared with Breitbart News, Ryan can be clearly heard saying:
His comments are not anywhere in keeping with our party’s principles and values. There are basically two things that I want to make really clear, as for myself as your Speaker. I am not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future. As you probably heard, I disinvited him from my first congressional district GOP event this weekend—a thing I do every year. And I’m not going to be campaigning with him over the next 30 days.
Look, you guys know I have real concerns with our nominee. I hope you appreciate that I’m doing what I think is best for you, the members, not what’s best for me. So, I want to do what’s best for our members, and I think this is the right thing to do. I’m going to focus my time on campaigning for House Republicans. I talked to a bunch of you over the last 72 hours, and here is basically my takeaway. To everyone on this call, this is going to be a turbulent month. Many of you on this call are facing tough reelections. Some of you are not. But with respect to Donald Trump, I would encourage you to do what you think is best and do what you feel you need to do. Personally, you need to decide what’s best for you. And you all know what’s best for you where you are …
But the last thing I want to do is to help Hillary Clinton get the presidency, and get Congress. Look, she’s a failed progressive. She’s running an abysmal campaign. I mean, it’s just—it’s amazing how easily she could be beaten. She will take this country in the wrong direction. And the last thing we need is four more years of Obama policies or two years of a Clinton presidency with a Democrat Congress. Could you imagine what that would look like? So the last thing we want to be doing is giving Hillary Clinton a blank check in Congress.
That’s why I’m going to spend the rest of this month fighting for Congress, fighting for our majorities. I’m going to spend the next 28 days working hard with all of our members to get reelected because we need a check on Hillary Clinton if Donald Trump and Mike Pence don’t win the presidency. Greg Walden will get more into what that looks like and what polling looks like, but I want to basically close with this: His comments are indefensible, they’re not in keeping with our principles, so I’m not going to try to defend him. I’m going to focus on Congress, I’m going to focus on upholding our values. We have a great, great policy agenda—A Better Way—that we need to take to voters and show what our party actually stands for and what it’s stood for generations.
The video clip above features the full audio.
The irony is that at the onset of the recording, House Republican Conference Chairwoman U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), can be heard telling the Republicans on the call that what was said would likely be leaked to the public by someone. In fact, bits and pieces of what was said were leaked to the liberal mainstream media, but not a full transcript.
This leak follows on the heels of reports the president is not happy—despite his public statements otherwise—about the American Health Care Act, now known as RINOcare, because he was misled by Ryan about how popular it would be with conservatives. Capitol Hill is now buzzing with reports the bill will be scrapped altogether and a new one constructed—or that it may be replaced with Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) legislation that was already passed by the GOP-led Congress in 2015.
The legislation faces its stiffest test Thursday when it comes before the House Budget Committee, where just four Republicans could vote against the bill and prevent it from moving out.
At the time the substance of the conversation was leaked to the media, Trump had been less than kind in his response on Twitter. He has been relatively quiet about the new revelations on Tuesday.
The president was reminded of Ryan’s refusal to campaign with him during a meeting over the weekend with conservative leaders. Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots noted that her Super PAC had continued to “work the phones overtime” for the president as he tried to recover from the scandal.
Although she didn’t use anyone’s name, it was clear she was talking about Ryan’s lack of support. {eoa}
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