Is Paul Ryan Calling Donald Trump’s Bluff?


On the Sunday morning talk show circuit, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would not rule out removing Paul Ryan as the convention chair.

It turns out, it wouldn’t be that difficult.


Ryan, who as Speaker of the House, chairs the Republican National Convention had one response.

Just ask.

“He’s the nominee. I’ll do whatever he wants with respect to the convention,” Ryan said when asked about that scenario in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The bad blood has been brewing since last week when Trump said he felt “blindsided” by Ryan’s unwillingness to endorse him.

Ryan insists that he didn’t mean he would never endorse him.

“I never said never. I just said (not) at this point. I wish I had more time to get to know him before this happened. We just didn’t,” he said.

Some pundits think the unwillingness of Republican party leaders to support Trump points to something much deeper and more personal. On NPR’s “Morning Edition“, Tucker Carlson told correspondent Cokie Roberts it was good old fashioned snobbery.

“The other problem, of course, with Trump for the Republican establishment in D.C. is that he’s embarrassing aesthetically. And there is a kind of snobbery in this. I mean Paul Ryan, the speaker, could have called him directly on the phone and said, you know, here are three things we disagree on. Let’s come to terms on them or at least talk about them. Instead, without calling Trump, he booked an interview on CNN to basically express moral dissatisfaction and to make the point – I’m a better person than Donald Trump.

I mean, that’s not an issues divide. That’s something deeper. That’s a cultural divide.”


There are actual policy differences–as much as one can possibly discern what Trump’s policies are. Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus told radio host Mike Gallagher on Monday that Trump does not want to change the GOP platform and should explicitly say so. He also suggested that Trump could release a list of names of possible Supreme Court nominees.

“…those are the type of things though, that you can do to sort of lower the temperature and the anxiety, and that’s the type of stuff that I think should start to happen,” Priebus said.

Priebus may be engaging in a little wishful thinking. On “Meet The Press” Chuck Todd tried to pin Donald Trump on his plans for minimum wage and taxes, but the answers were all over the place, including firmly in Democratic Party talking points territory.

How this plays out remains to be seen. Ryan is scheduled to meet with Trump this Thursday.

Stay tuned.

Featured image by Tony Alter derivative work, via Wikimedia Commons by Creative Commons license.