Former Speaker of The House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), has revealed that his retirement from Congress last year was an “escape hatch” from President Donald Trump, according to new excerpts from a book obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release next week.
“I told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy to help him get his mind right,” Ryan said, according to Tim Alberta’s book ‘American Carnage.’ “Because, I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government … I wanted to scold him all the time.”
Ryan, an early Trump critic who ultimately fell mostly in line with supporting the president’s agenda, told Alberta that, on one occasion, Trump finally gave in to signing a 2018 spending bill that didn’t include border wall funding only after Ryan agreed to give him time to build suspense on Twitter.
On another, Ryan broke into “maniacal, punch-drunk laughter,” after then Chief of Staff Reince Priebus called him early one Saturday to ask about Trump’s tweet accusing the Obama administration of tapping his phone during the election.
“Paul, what the hell is going on? What the hell is he talking about?” Priebus reportedly asked the former Speaker.
Ryan also said those around Trump “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,” the former congressman says.
Ryan said he couldn’t stand another two years working with Trump in office, Alberta reports, adding that Ryan saw retirement as his “escape hatch.”
“We’ve gotten so numbed by it all,” Ryan says. “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. Trump is none of that.”
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