Paul Ryan Will Vacate Convention Chair if Trump Asks
Speaker Ryan ready to leave his convention seat for The Donald.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would leave his GOP convention chair if presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump asks him.
“He’s the nominee. I’ll do whatever he wants with respect to the convention,” he said.
Speaker Ryan responded to Trump’s interview on NBC’s Meet the Press from Sunday. Trump told host Chuck Todd that Ryan’s comments “blindsided” him.
“I like Paul Ryan. I think he’s a very good guy,” commented Trump. “He called me three weeks ago, and he was so supportive. It was amazing. And I never thought a thing like this. I got blindsided by this.”
Todd asked Trump if he would remove Ryan as chairman of the convention if the speaker does not endorse his candidacy.
“I don’t want to mention now. I’ll see after. I will give you a very solid answer, if that happens, about one minute after that happens. Okay?” answered Trump. “But there’s no reason to give it right now, but I’ll be very quick with the answer. Let’s see what happens.”
Last Thursday, Speaker Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper he cannot support Trump right now. A day later, his office announced he and Trump will meet with GOP leadership and then privately with RNC chairman Reince Priebus. The meeting will take place on Thursday at the RNC in Washington, D.C.
“I just want to get to know the guy … we just don’t know each other,” expressed Speaker Ryan to the newspaper. “I never said never. I just said (not) at this point. I wish I had more time to get to know him before this happened. We just didn’t.”
Speaker Ryan also said he wants to unify the party and pushed against a third-party candidate in November. He believes that a third-party or independent run would destroy the Republican party.
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Comments
Ryan wants out. Trump wants to see him squirm.
Like a snake on hot concrete.
Ryan made a bad move. If I were Trump I’d say Your Out Paul. The Party’s Nominee deserves a
Convention Chair who does not have doubts.
If I were Trump I’d say Your Out Paul.
Of course you would, complete with misspellings.
Are you mental? No candidate to be nominee should have any say about how the convention is run or who it is run by, that is for he delegates to decide not the people seeing the nomination.
What Trump needs to do is sit back and shut his cake hole for once before he pisses off to many delegates.
Ryan was the fool that tried a sacrifice throw on Trump. Instead he found himself flying halfway across the mat.
Small Paul is a rino personified. A complete, corrupt waste.
Get him out of the convention so he can run to the democrat convention.
Small Paul is boehner, without the booze.
Victory in November would be much more assured if the Republican elite/establishment spent half as much effort going after Hillary as they have going after Trump.
The GOP is imploding. Ryan is one of the reasons it’s doing so.
Ryan needs to go.
I actually think Ryan is one of the guys most likely to help our government move forward. He does represent compromise, but without it, we are left stuck in the mud.
He sure compromised in that last budget, didn’t he.
Yeah he did…a lot of people got things they wanted. It was a punt, what do you expect from a speaker that didn’t want to be speaker?
…and he “compromised” on the 2017 budget by giving Obama a 2.5% across the board increase. He also killed the bill to impeach IRS commissioner Koskinen. He also killed the bill to make Wall St. hedge funds pay the same income tax rate as the rest of us. Ryan is just an extension of Boehner.
As opposition leader, Ryan is a loser – unless you’re a corrupt rino, then the guy is the best thing since sliced bread.
The GOP is imploding. Ryan is one of the reasons it’s doing so.
Even though Ryan has been there for years and Trump just showed up. I find the timing of this implosion to be suspicious.
Trump is a chameleon.
The only thing you can be certain of is he will attempt to Ju-jitsu his opponents and drive the news cycle without spending a lot of money on ads.
What is Hillary?
Wait we know… Crooked Clinton! P:)
Many people are asking the same questions of Trump as Ryan is asking. They’re legitimate questions. Letting Trump name his own convention chairman encourages Trump to take ownership of the process moving forward. If he doesn’t believe he requires the support of conservatives or the evil GOPe, then neither group has any real reason to expend time or treasure supporting him. Just because you can’t stop the train wreck doesn’t mean you’re obligated to climb aboard and go for the ride.
Hey, Mr. Stubby-fingers says he doesn’t need conservatives.
I’m good with that. He sure isn’t getting any support from any conservative I know!
Are you sitting this one out?
Isn’t that what Jeb said too?
Seems to me that would mean the establishment got what they wanted all along.
Jeb is the establishment, but is sitting this out.
Bob Dole is the establishment, but endorses Trump.
Lindsey Graham is the establishment, but supported Cruz.
I think the establishment may not be the monolith you think it is.
If Der Donald is the nominee, I will write in Cruz and vote down-ticket for Texas conservatives.
So, no. Not sitting. Actively objecting.
I hope you enjoy Obama 2.0.
Should’ve perhaps thought of that before you nominated a Democrat unfit for office.
Trump himself said he can win without us. Good luck with that – or are you calling him a liar (like I have for over 10 months now)?
1) My conscience is 100% clean. I didn’t vote to nominate Trump.
2) If a landslide loss is what it take to show that Trump is as unelectable as we always said he was, so be it.
3) If Hillary enacting ultra amnesty is what it takes to teach the alt-right about spiteful folly, so be it.
We didn’t inflict this clown on the nation, you did.
I can’t say it much better than the 2 above me. I have been #NeverTrump since the last time he ran, so I take zero responsibility for what is about to happen.
Frankly I hope the rules committee pulls some shenanigans and unbinds all the delegates for the first vote.
Ryan rolled over for Pelosi. He rolled over for Reid. He rolled over for Obama. Now he says he’ll roll over for Trump. I see a pattern.
Generally speaking, a Chairman should’t be particularly partisan. In this case, he shouldn’t be definitely for or against Trump. However, it doesn’t seem terribly important here, as there’s only one real candidate. So it gives Trump some options for the next step in his campaign. I expect he’ll use the opportunity—as usual—in some way his perpetually unimaginative opponents haven’t considered yet.
A Chairman shouldn’t be particularly partisan? He shouldn’t be definitely for or against Trump? I could agree with that if there was going to be a contested convention. Ted Cruz has suspended his campaign, therefore, whether you like it or not, Trump is the presumptive nominee. This is the Republican Party’s convention. If now is not the time to be partisan, when is it? As Chairman, and as Speaker of the House, he should be trying to unite the party!
Or maybe he is smart enough to realize that when we say #NeverTrump we actually mean it.
Ryan is a free person and can withhold his endorsement for any reason he chooses that is his personal decision and should have no effect on his standing.
IF Trump wants to be President, it’s HIS job to unite the party. If he can’t do that, then he doesn’t deserve the job.
Well said and exactly right.
Paul Ryan should also have some responsibility for uniting the party. It was quite surprising to me that Ryan actually requested the CNN interview to state that he’s “not ready” to endorse Trump. I don’t believe that’s a healthy way to promote unity.
The #NeverTrump people have been openly saying that Trump is not the presumptive nominee because the rules can be changed after the primaries and before the convention opens. Their goal is to change the rules to a) block Trump and b) name another nominee who did not win the delegates in the primaries. So there is going to be a battle at the convention. Granting that the fix may be in already, but it is the norm for the presiding officer of a convention to at least pretend to be neutral. Ryan had the obvious option of saying that he could not endorse anybody until the convention was over, because he was the presiding officer. Instead, he deliberately left the impression that he was anti-Trump. So he gets whatever blowback comes from that.
Just as I do take the #NeverTrump people at their word that they will never support Trump, even at the cost of electing Hillary, I believe them when they say the various ways they will oppose him. It is what it is.
Subotai Bahadur
All of that can happen and frankly would give me a warm fuzzy feeling all over, but it is highly unlikely. If there is one thing the GOP is lacking it is the testicular fortitude to actually take action that makes sense to save itself.
Trump is the presumptive nominee, and barely that, he has zilch to say about who is the chair and/or Co-Chair, Also, Ryan is no less partisan for not endorsing Trump than he would be for Endorsing Trump.
oops Sorry Tom this was actually meant for Thinker.
If Ryan or anyone else endorses Trump, they can scratch me off their list. They will never again get any $$, help, or votes from me.
I didn’t work almost a half century building a conservative GOP to see it turned over to human garbage like Trump.
You’re such a con artist. “conservative” GOP? Give me a break.
Some hard work you’ve done. I forget, who did you support this year? That’s right, you will not tell us.
Building a conservative GOP that rolled over and gave Obama everything he wanted..and then some?
You make me laugh!
My suggestion to Trump is to check himself, he isn’t in charge of the convention and has no power to remove anyone as chair. In fact I don’t think that Ryan can even step down.
Let Ryan step down. Please! With Trump running the convention, the TV ratings will be through the roof. Tens of millions of viewers who usually ignore politics will tune in for the spectacle. The Democratic convention will look antiquated in comparison. Trump’s post-convention bump will be Yuuuuuuuuuuge! Hillary will never recover.
Unfortunately there are things that we call Rules, Trump is a candidate to be the nominee, which means as far as the convention goes he is in charge of exactly 2 things, Jack and Crap.
America will hate-watch the GOP convention.
I guess Trump is easily “blindsided”. It’s not hard to figure out Ryan’s game. He’ll give a half-hearted semi-endorsement. He’ll try to save the down-ballot candidates without having his fingerprints around Trump’s run so that he can come back and try to restore the party in 2018.
It might be an entirely wrong strategy because the GOP will be forever maligned as the party of Trump and thus unsalvageable. See here:
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/opinion/ci_29859516/thomas-sowell-trump-is-an-unmitigated-disaster
The linked article is an excellent read. It looks like both Ryan and Trump want to meet and work things out, but Palin decided to “go rogue” or whatever and target him for a primary challenge. And the Trump spokeswoman who declared him “unfit for office” and Breitbart did their part too. Ryan comes out looking like the grown-up here.
And I figured out what’s bugging me about Trump – its not so much the rhetoric or tone. Its simply that he doesn’t have any experience at all, yet he’s so willing to criticize those who do.
It reminds me of Obama in 2008 – a junior senator whose only accomplishments were writing his biography, winning a Senate election, and suing citibank for “redlining”, and here he was telling Bush how we should have fought the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq or balanced the budget or saved the economy or stopped terrorist attacks or whatever. It was laughable, and even more so when his supporters told you what a genius he was. Of course now he’s been President for 7 years and has nothing except doubling the national debt.
Ryan needs to go. He is making a fool of himself. He should be the very first one to welcome Trump but instead he takes an indefensible position with the party.No leadership skills at all.
By opposing or at least not backing Trump to a majority of the party Ryan is showing leadership.
#NeverTrump
#ReadyForHillary
Nah. He’s showing he’s a hypocrite and out for himself and the other corrupt hacks infesting the leadership of the GOPe.
No thinking or uncorrupt person would think of voting for clinton.