Ryan says ‘no thanks’ after Boehner endorses him for president

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul Ryan sought Wednesday to bury speculation about whether he would accept the GOP presidential nomination at a contested convention.

“The speaker is grateful for the support, but he is not interested,” Ryan spokesperson Ash-Lee Strong said after reports Wednesday that former House Speaker John Boehner had “endorsed” Ryan for president.

“He will not accept a nomination and believes our nominee should be someone who ran this year,” said Strong.

Ryan himself followed that with a categorical rejection of the idea, saying in an interview with Politico that there is “no situation” in which he would accept the nomination this year and that “I am not going to becomethe president through Cleveland.”

Cleveland is the site of the Republican Party’ s July convention.

Boehner said Wednesday at a conference in Florida that if no candidate reaches the convention with a majority of dele- gates, “anyone” can be selected, and Ryan is his pick. Draft notice?

Speculation about a deadlocked convention often turns to Ryan, who was the choice of his House Republican colleagues when there seemed to be no other consensus choice for speaker after Boehner stepped down. But Ryan passed up a chance to run for president in this cycle, and recently disavowed an effort to draft him for president, prompting the committee behind it to disband.

C NBC reported Tuesday that in an interview, Ryan didn’t rule out accepting the nomination at a deadlocked convention.

But Ryan aides challenged that interpretation of his remarks, and issued an emphatic denial Wednesday that Ryan would be open to such a scenario.

Ryan also denied any interest in being House speaker before agreeing to serve in that role. But Ryan said Wednesday that was a different situation because he was already serving in the House at the time. One other difference is that Ryan agreed to serve as speaker only when there was a consensus in the party to elect him. There would be no consensus in the party possible for Ryan ina dead locked convention because backers of frontrunner Donald Trump would be sure to rebel.

Warning of ‘riots’ Trump is the only Republican candidate with a realistic chance of winning a delegate majority before the convention, buthe is far from a lock to do so. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is his closest competitor.

Trump warned on CNN on Wednesday of violence and upheaval if he arrives at the GOP convention with close to a delegate majority and a clear delegate lead but is denied the nomination.

“I think you’d have riots,” Trump said. “I’m representing many, many millions of people. If you disenfranchise those people, and you say ,‘ Well, I’m sorry, but you’re 100 votes short,’ even though the next (candidate) is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”