The Republican former US House Speaker has been calling out the ex-President as NO GOOD for Republicans for quite some time….
After already blaming him for repeated Republican election losses, former House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday didn’t mince words and blasted former President Donald Trump for what he characterized as acting like an “authoritarian narcissist.”
“Trump’s not a conservative,” Ryan said at a virtual event hosted by Teneo, a consulting firm that advises CEOs. “He’s a populist, authoritarian narcissist. So, historically speaking, all of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, make him feel good at any given moment.”
Ryan’s comments amount to some of his harshest words yet for the former president and now frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, whom he has decisively characterized as a losing hand for his party in elections, past and future. That contrasts with Ryan’s pulled punches when he was House speaker and learning how to work with Trump.
In fact, Ryan did not start speaking out against Trump until he left office — a change of course he has since attributed to a good-faith effort of wanting to work with the former president when Ryan held the speaker’s gavel. He served as speaker for two years during Trump’s term, before leaving office.
“We needed to make it work,” the former speaker told The New York Times Magazine in March. “That was my strong conviction. Did I think he was going to improve and grow in the job? Yeah. He didn’t. It was after I left when he really went off the rails. He was getting rid of the people who were telling him what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear.”
Other Republicans in Washington, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell….
image…The Gardian