Donald Trump hit back at House Speaker Paul Ryan on Monday, just hours after the Wisconsin Republican advised his congressional colleagues to “do what’s best” for them in their districts and said he would no longer defend the GOP presidential nominee.
“Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting the Republican nominee,” Trump tweeted to his 12 million followers.
Ryan and Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, who chairs the National Congressional Campaign Committee, co-hosted a conference with a record number of GOP lawmakers Monday morning to “touch base with members about the current landscape” of the 2016 campaign, sources told the Washington Examiner ahead of the call.
According to those involved in the discussion, Ryan encouraged House Republicans to do what they think is best in terms of choosing to support or distance themselves from Trump in their own districts, but didn’t revoke his own endorsement of the GOP presidential nominee. Several Republican lawmakers retracted their support and urged their party’s nominee to withdraw from the race in the wake of a leaked video in which he can be heard making lewd and sexually explicit comments about a married woman.
Trump apologized for his controversial comments in a late-night video on Friday and again during the second presidential debate on Sunday evening. “I was embarrassed by it, but I have tremendous respect for women,” he told undecided voters at the town hall-style debate.
Ryan is likely to “spend his entire energy making sure that Hillary Clinton does not get a blank check with a Democrat-controlled Congress,” said one source who was on the Monday morning conference call, as reported by the Examiner.
After publicly feuding for months, Ryan offered a tepid endorsement of Trump in early June and later spoke at the GOP convention in July. The two Republican leaders had planned to make their first joint appearance on the campaign trail in Wisconsin last weekend, but neither Trump nor his running mate Mike Pence ended up attending following the scandal.
Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong declined to directly respond to Trump’s tweet. “The Speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities in order to advance our ‘Better Way’ agenda,” she wrote in an email to the Examiner.
Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 10, 2016
