Paul Ryan Would Step Down If Donald Trump Asked Him To


Paul Ryan, the current Speaker of the House and Republican convention chairman, made quite a wave last week when he said that he was not willing to support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump yet. While some other Republicans, such as Sarah Palin, have spoken out against Ryan after this, Ryan seems unfazed and made an even bolder statement more recently. Fox News reported on Monday that Paul Ryan said that he would step down from his position as Republican convention chairman if needed.

Paul Ryan Would Step Down If Donald Trump Asked
[Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP Images]

The Paul Ryan comment came following an interview with the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. Not only did the newspaper quote Ryan as saying he would step down if Donald Trump asked him to, but he also said that he never called Donald to talk after the New York primary, something that Trump claimed happened. The newspaper even released some audio from the interview to prove that Ryan did indeed make these comments.

This is an interesting time for the Republican Party. Both Bob Dole and Dick Cheney offered their endorsements for Trump heading into the 2016 election. Salon reported over the weekend that Cheney said he has always supported the GOP candidates, and he won’t change this year. NBC News then reported that Dole also spoke up and said that the Republican Party needs to honor the voters who showed up to vote for Trump in record numbers.

On the other side of the party, outside of Paul Ryan, both Jeb Bush and Lindsay Graham also announced that they will refuse to vote for either Trump or Hillary Clinton in the election, saying that Trump is not a true conservative. Graham went even further, criticizing Trump for his comments about John McCain, George W. Bush, and Vladimir Putin. Those comments came in an exclusive interview with CNN.

William Kristol, the editor of the right-leaning Weekly Standard, has even come out and said that a number of Republicans are looking for a third candidate to run against Trump and Clinton. MSN reported that Kristol already approached Mitt Romney about possibly either running as that candidate or endorsing another third candidate if one is found.

With so much controversy surrounding Trump, the fact that Paul Ryan refuses to endorse him has just incensed other Republicans. Sarah Palin has been the most vocal, saying Ryan has “disrespected the will of the American people.” AOL reported that Palin wants Ryan out of the position as Speaker of the House and even said that she will support Paul Nehlen, the main rival to Ryan for that position.

This backlash comes after Paul Ryan said that he was not ready to support Trump yet. Ryan said that he wants Trump to stop bullying people and to prove that he supports true conservative issues. However, Ryan has also acknowledged that this has all caused a rift in his party and that rift needs to be fixed or it could hurt them in the 2016 election.

“We have right now a disunified Republican Party. We shouldn’t sweep it under the rug without addressing it. That would be to our detriment in the fall.”

That is in large part why Paul Ryan said that he would step down as the Republican convention chairman if asked by Trump. As far as Ryan is concerned, the success of the Republican Party is more important than the disillusionment of certain members of the party itself. As Paul Ryan went on to say in the interview, it is better to stop pretending they are unified or else they will only be half-strength when the election comes around.

Paul Ryan Would Step Down If Donald Trump Asked
[Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP Images]

At the moment, it appears that the 2016 Presidential Election will pit Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton. This is how things look to stand unless Bernie Sanders pulls an upset or if a third party does creep up to run against the two. As for Paul Ryan, he is not willing to stand in the way of his party, even if he does not support their candidate.

[Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Images]

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