Trump Unloads on 'Lame Duck Failure' Paul Ryan After Fresh Criticism from the Former House Speaker
President Donald Trump on Thursday fired back at former House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, whose criticisms of Trump are published in a new book.
“Paul Ryan, the failed V.P. candidate & former Speaker of the House, whose record of achievement was atrocious (except during my first two years as President), ultimately became a long running lame duck failure, leaving his Party in the lurch both as a fundraiser & leader,” Trump tweeted.
Paul Ryan, the failed V.P. candidate & former Speaker of the House, whose record of achievement was atrocious (except during my first two years as President), ultimately became a long running lame duck failure, leaving his Party in the lurch both as a fundraiser & leader……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019
“When Mitt chose Paul I told people that’s the end of that Presidential run. He quit Congress because he didn’t know how to Win. They gave me standing O’s in the Great State of Wisconsin, & booed him off the stage. He promised me the Wall, & failed (happening anyway!),” Trump tweeted.
….When Mitt chose Paul I told people that’s the end of that Presidential run. He quit Congress because he didn’t know how to Win. They gave me standing O’s in the Great State of Wisconsin, & booed him off the stage. He promised me the Wall, & failed (happening anyway!)……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019
“He had the Majority & blew it away with his poor leadership and bad timing. Never knew how to go after the Dems like they go after us. Couldn’t get him out of Congress fast enough!” Trump tweeted.
….He had the Majority & blew it away with his poor leadership and bad timing. Never knew how to go after the Dems like they go after us. Couldn’t get him out of Congress fast enough!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019
Ryan, who did not embrace Trump’s candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 and never fully warmed to Trump as president, criticized Trump in the book “American Carnage,” written by Tim Alberta of Politico.
“I told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy to help him get his mind right,” Ryan is quoted as saying in the book, in an excerpt published by The Washington Post.
“Because, I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government … I wanted to scold him all the time,” Fox News reports Ryan as saying.
“Those of us around him really helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time. We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was. Now I think he’s making some of these knee-jerk reactions.”
Ryan called leaving Washington an “escape hatch” that allowed him to get away from Trump.
“We’ve gotten so numbed by it all,” Ryan said in the book. “Not in government, but where we live our lives, we have a responsibility to try and rebuild. Don’t call a woman a ‘horse face.’ Don’t cheat on your wife. Don’t cheat on anything. Be a good person. Set a good example.”
Some on Twitter trashed Ryan for his comments on Trump.
Paul Ryan Betrayed Everyone But the Koch Bros, Chamber of Horrors, and the Other Lobbyists Who Owned Him: @realDonaldTrump trashes ‘lame duck failure’ Ryan in response to new criticisms https://t.co/lFh2XN3OFN #FoxNews #MAGA #AmericaFirst #Dobbs
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) July 12, 2019
Paul Ryan spent 2 decades in DC and got absolutely nothing done https://t.co/RRxR09piCG
— Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) July 12, 2019
The book claims that when former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus called Ryan to ask about a tweet Trump sent in 2017 accusing former President Barack Obama of tapping his phone, Ryan erupted in “maniacal, punch-drunk laughter.”
According to the Post’s excerpt, Trump called Ryan a “f—ing Boy Scout” when he was interviewed by Alberta for the book.
In writing about the book, The Post sums it up this way: “The book details how many Republicans who once criticized Trump quickly changed their tune after his election, striking a devil’s bargain with a man Alberta describes in the book as behaving in a way that is dishonest, amoral, narcissistic and uninformed.”
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