Dreamy Paul Ryan has some thoughts about Donald Trump
The Guardian has a write up on his comments on a podcast from last month that’s only now making the rounds. He doesn’t say anything we all didn’t already know but it might mean something to a few swing voters who remember him as a normal Republican:
Ryan, from Wisconsin, left Congress in 2019 and now sits on the board of Fox Corp, parent company of Fox News. He was speaking to Kevin Kajiwara, co-president of Teneo Political Risk Advisory, in a podcast interview recorded in November but widely noticed this week.
Voices on both sides of the main political aisle have criticised Ryan for not strongly opposing Trump when he ran for the Republican nomination in 2016, or through four chaotic years in the White House that ended in the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.
When stepping down Ryan praised Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, widely blamed for increasing inequality and the national deficit, as one of his biggest achievements along with increasing defense spending.
Trump was impeached twice, including for January 6, but escaped conviction and now dominates polling for the next Republican presidential nomination.
He does so despite facing 91 criminal charges, including 17 related to attempted election subversion, and civil threats including a business fraud trial and a defamation suit arising from a rape claim a judge called “substantially true”.
Kajiwara asked Ryan how he thought history would judge Kinzinger and Cheney, conservative Republicans from Illinois and Wyoming who stood against Trump and sat on the January 6 committee before being forced out of Congress.
“Look,” Ryan said, “Trump’s not a conservative. He’s an authoritarian narcissist. So I think they basically called him out for that. He’s a populist, authoritarian narcissist.
“… All of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good at any given moment.
“He doesn’t think in classical liberal-conservative terms. He thinks in an authoritarian way. And he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior.”
Ryan, an economic conservative who was Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, continued: “There has to be some line, some principle that is so important to you that you’re just not going to cross, so that when you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, look yourself in the mirror, you like what you see. I think Adam and Liz are brushing their teeth, liking what they see.
“And I think a lot of people in Congress … on the second impeachment, they thought Trump was dead. They thought after January 6, he wasn’t going to have a comeback. He was dead, so they figured, ‘I’m not going to take this heat, vote against this impeachment, because he’s gone anyway.’
“But … he’s been resurrected. There’s lots of reasons for that. But he has been. So I think there’s a lot of people who already regret not getting him out of the way when they could have. So I think history will be kind to those people who saw what was happening and called it out, even though it was at the expense of their wellbeing.”
@accountablegop Former House Speaker Paul Ryan praises Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney for standing up to Trump: “Trump's not a conservative. He's an authoritarian, a narcissist…Adam and Liz stepped out of the flow and called it out and paid for it with their careers.” #republican #accountability #gop #nevertrump #never #trump #politics #political #fyp #foryou #washingtondc #conservative ♬ original sound – AccountableGOP
Did Ryan call it out early? I don’t remember that.
But better late than never, I suppose. But it would be good if he appeared in some places other than an obscure podcast to make these comments. Like Fox news, for instance. He’s on the board for crying out loud.
Sure the MAGA crowd will reject him as the worst RINO. They did that all the way back in 2016. But there might be a few people who need to hear this that could be persuaded not to vote for him.
I don’t expect Paul Ryan to come out for Biden. (I suppose it’s possible since it’s looking more like Cheney and Kinzinger will do it, but I’d be shocked.) Still, if he made the case for staying home or writing in someone else it could help. Just saying this stuff is better than nothing but he could do a lot more.
Everybody knows that he’s not the only Republican who thinks this. Maybe his coming forward will motivate some of them to speak out as well. I’m not counting on it, but you never know.
Happy Hollandaise everyone! If you’d like to help keep the lights on I’d appreciate it: