The Principles of Paul Ryan, Principled Man of Principle
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Paul Ryan has drawn a line in the sand! Okay, maybe he keeps erasing them, but this time he means it:
Just days after Donald Trump announced his third bid for the White House, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan denounced the twice-impeached former president’s political future, calling himself a “Never-Again-Trumper.”
“I’m proud of the accomplishments [during the Trump administration] — of the tax reform, the deregulation and criminal justice reform — I’m really excited about the judges we got on the bench, not just the Supreme Court, but throughout the judiciary,” Ryan told ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent and “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview that aired Sunday. “But I am a Never-Again-Trumper. Why? Because I want to win, and we lose with Trump. It was really clear to us in ’18, in ’20 and now in 2022.”
While Republicans secured the House with a razor-thin majority, they failed to flip the Senate. The “red wave” that was widely predicted this midterm season did not come to pass. Ryan put the blame directly on the former president.
What “Never-Again-Trumper” means is “I will not support Donald Trump unless he is the Republican nominee for president,” and the only actual objection Republican elites like Ryan have to Trump is that they think he’s less likely to win. The rain on their wedding day being that their lack of courage makes Trump losing the primary much less likely in the first place.