Ryan won’t support ‘censure’ of Trump
‘Counterproductive’
MADISON, Wisconsin, Aug 22, (Agencies): US House Speaker Paul Ryan said he will not support a resolution to censure President Donald Trump over his comments following a white supremacist rally in Virginia, but said Trump “messed up” by saying “both sides” were to blame for violence and that there were “very fine people” among those marching to protect Confederate statues.
Ryan made the comments during a town hall Monday night organized by CNN in his Wisconsin congressional district, after being asked whether he would back the resolution that comes following Trump’s comments about the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The question came from Rabbi Dena Feingold, the sister of former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who grew up in the same city as Ryan.
Ryan said censuring Trump would be “counterproductive.” “If we descend this issue into some partisan hackfest, into some bickering against each other and demean it down into some political food fight, what good does that do to unify this country?” Ryan said, adding that it would be the “worst thing we could do.”
While Ryan said he wouldn’t support censuring Trump, he gave his sharpest criticism to date of the president’s comments in the wake of the rally where a woman protesting against the white supremacists was killed by a man identified as a neo-Nazi supporter. Ryan had previously spoken out against the violence, both on Twitter and in a statement earlier Monday, but he hadn’t previously addressed Trump’s comments directly.
“I do believe that he messed up in his comments on Tuesday when it sounded like a moral equivocation or at the very least moral ambiguity when we need extreme moral clarity,” Ryan said of Trump. “You’re not a good person if you’re there, it’s so very clear.”
The Ryan town hall began 30 minutes later than originally planned to accommodate Trump’s nationwide address where he outlined a new strategy for troops in Afghanistan. Trump vowed to keep American troops fighting in Afghanistan, despite his earlier inclination to withdraw.
Ryan said he was “pleased” with what he heard from Trump and that it represented a more comprehensive strategy than what had been in place under former president Barack Obama. Ryan said he was also glad that Trump is moving away from having a timetable for withdrawing from Afghanistan and wants to prevent creating a safe haven for terrorists.
“We can’t afford to allow that to happen again,” Ryan said.
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WASHINGTON: Three Democratic US senators wrote to senior administration officials on Monday seeking confirmation on whether White House counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka is under criminal investigation for failing to disclose his membership in a Hungarian neo-Nazi organization.
“As a senior counterterrorism advisor, Mr Gorka is in a position of great importance and public trust. The American people are entitled to know if a senior White House official is under criminal investigation,” Senators Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal and Benjamin Cardin said in the letter.
They said the letter was a follow-up to a letter they sent in March calling for an investigation of whether Gorka had “falsified his naturalization application or otherwise illegally procured American citizenship.”
Gorka “reportedly concealed his membership in the Vitezi Rend, a far-right anti-Semitic Hungarian organization with historical ties to the Nazis, when he applied for US citizenship,” the senators said in Monday’s letter.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.