Paul Ryan: Defending his cave-in to Trump
Six months after he fled Congress, former House Speaker Paul Ryan is still defensive about selling out to President Trump, said John Nichols in TheNation.com. In an extensive interview for Tim Alberta’s new book American Carnage, which details Trump’s takeover of the GOP, Ryan now frankly admits the president “didn’t know anything about government...I wanted to scold him all the time.” But, Ryan says, he realized “I gotta have a relationship with this guy” to stop him from “making bad decisions.” What a self-serving rationalization. After rebuking Trump during the campaign for his “textbook racism” and the Access Hollywood tape, Ryan caved in, sending a signal that “Trump was acceptable to the elites of the GOP.” When Trump took office, Ryan appeased and publicly flattered the new president; in return, he got a big tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. Ryan wants to “rehabilitate his doormat reputation,” said Eric Lutz in VanityFair .com. Unfortunately, dishing on Trump’s incompetence “after the fact” only confirms how cowardly it was to enable this “nightmare government.”
Ryan’s “surrender to Trumpism” was heartbreaking, said Charles Sykes in TheBulwark.com. Elected to the House at age 28, he was a policy wonk touted as “the future of the conservative movement,” with a plan to remake the GOP “to reach a broader swath of a diversifying nation.” As Trump stormed through the primaries, Ryan felt real panic, understanding what “a Trumpian takeover” would mean. Yet like the rest of his party, Ryan decided to “kiss the ring” of the man who derisively calls him a “f---ing Boy Scout,” refusing “to call out the insults, slurs, ignorance, and bigotry of the president.”
Many Republicans share Ryan’s dilemma, said Lisa Mascaro and Deb Riechmann in the Associated Press. Trump’s critics within his party “are increasingly unwilling, or unable, to speak their minds” for fear of incurring “his wrath, or that of his constituents.” After Ryan’s recent shots at Trump, the president retaliated with typical venom on Twitter: “They gave me standing O’s in the Great State of Wisconsin, & booed him off stage.” Trump called Ryan’s record “atrocious,” even though Ryan was instrumental “in securing Trump’s main domestic policy achievement,” the tax cut. That’s the cost of disloyalty to Trump: scorn and exile. In the end, Ryan told Alberta, he “couldn’t stomach” it anymore. “Rather than stick around, he left.”