Paul Ryan Just Discovered What Happens When You Disagree With Trump

For once the House Speaker had the temerity to comment on the news of the day.

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

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Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has come up with every possible excuse to avoid commenting on the news of the day

“I’m not going to take the bait this morning,” he said when asked about Donald Trump’s support for torture

“I haven’t paid that close attention to it,” he said when asked about Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency’s scandal-plagued ex-administrator. 

“I haven’t seen the details yet,” he said when asked about a remarkably optimistic White House budget.  

So when the Speaker of the House, who is not running for reelection, finally decided to chime in on Donald Trump’s threat to eliminate birthright citizenship for undocumented immigrants by executive order—something legal scholars have roundly described as unconstitutional—it seemed only fitting that the president would retort that Ryan “knows nothing about” the topic. 

A spokesperson for Ryan did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s tweet, but the Speaker once told reporters: “I’ve decided I’m not going to comment on the tweets of the day or the hour. I haven’t seen them all, to be candid with you.”

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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