Influencing Trump is a ‘day-by-day deal,’ Paul Ryan says

At a town hall event held with Boeing employees on the aircraft maker’s factory floor, Ryan was asked how he tried to exert a positive influence on Trump, who the questioner said was not perceived as treating everyone equally.

“It’s a day-by-day deal,” Ryan said, noting that he was only kind of joking.

“First, you control your own actions,” he said.

Trump criticized Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Thursday for the upcoming fight on the debt limit.

“I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval. They didn’t do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!” Trump tweeted.

Ryan said Thursday that the debt ceiling would be lifted. “We pay our debts in this country. … I’m not worried that’s not going to get done,” he said.

Addressing the president’s controversial comments related to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., this month, which involved racist groups, Ryan stated that “we can never get normal with this,” and that the day that the country fails to condemn it unequivocally, “we have a huge hit to our culture and our society.”

Ryan visited Boeing and toured the factory Thursday as part of an effort to highlight his effort to pass tax reform.

“It’s really important that the president succeeds, because if he succeeds, the country succeeds,” Ryan said, laying out the agenda priorities he shares with Trump.