House Speaker Paul Ryan made it official Thursday: He will vote for Donald Trump in November.
In a column penned in the Janesville Gazette, the speaker’s hometown paper, Ryan announced that he will back the presumptive GOP nominee after weeks of discussions after initially declining to support him. Pointing to his multiple conversations with Trump since he became the nominee, Ryan said that he believes Trump will back the House policy agenda he has been pushing.
“The House policy agenda has been the main focus of our dialogue,” Ryan wrote. “We’ve talked about the common ground this agenda can represent. We’ve discussed how the House can be a driver of policy ideas. We’ve talked about how important these reforms are to saving our country. And we’ve talked about how, by focusing on issues that unite Republicans, we can work together to heal the fissures developed through the primary.”
“Through these conversations, I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people’s lives,” Ryan said before making it official. “That’s why I’ll be voting for him this fall.”
Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck went further on Twitter soon after, writing that the speaker isn’t playing “word games” and that the news should be considered an “endorsement.”
Ryan made waves on May 6 when he declined to back the presumptive nominee, saying he was “just not ready” to support him at the time given their disagreements on policy.
News of Ryan’s support is yet another sign of the party coalescing around the nominee. Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio, one of Trump’s main foes during the 2016 race, announced that he too would back the real estate mogul despite comments made during the campaign.
Trump and Ryan first met in a highly-anticipated meeting at the Republican National Committee on May 12, joined by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, who announced that Trump had become the party’s presumptive nominee after topping Sen. Ted Cruz in the Indiana primary.
