Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:09 pm
The moment that Donald Trump’s name was mentioned at his weekly press conference, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan threw a fit and refused to answer a question about the GOP nominee’s new praise for Putin.
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Speaker Ryan got testy when asked by a reporter about Trump’s claim that Putin is a better leader than President Obama.
The Speaker of the House said, “Do you think I’m going to stand up here and be election pundit? I’ve got other things to do in this job. Yeah, he’s the nominee of our party, because he won our nomination fair and square. I’m not going to sit up here and do the tit for tat on what Donald said last night, or the night before, and Hillary versus Donald. That is not my job, and I’m not going to be the election year pundit commenting on all these little things. I’ll leave it at that.”
The highest ranking elected Republican in the country is refusing to answer any question’s about his own party’s nominee for president. Speaker Ryan’s refusal to say that praising dictators and strongmen as superior to a democratically elected president is wrong summed up the GOP’s Trump problem.
Ryan was trying to run away from Trump without looking like he is running away from Trump. Speaker Ryan’s annoyance at the question was made obvious by his drumming of his fingers on the podium as the reporter was asking him about Trump. Ryan’s faux anger at the media for daring to ask him about Trump isn’t going to make the questions stop.
The Trump iceberg has hit Speaker Ryan’s unsinkable GOP Titanic. Captain Ryan can order the band to play on, but the question isn’t if the ship will sink, but how many Republicans will survive.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
