With Super Tuesday voting ongoing, the result of which will probably cement Donald Trump as the prohibitive favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier today delivered a scathing rebuke of Trump, warning that the GOP presidential frontrunner cannot engage in “evasion” or “games” when it comes to rejecting bigotry.
Yet, Ryan, the reluctant Speaker successor to John Boehner and the chairman of the national Republican Convention this July, said he plans to support the eventual nominee of his party.
“This is the kind of moment where we should be having a serious debate about the policies needed to restore the American idea,” Ryan told reporters on Super Tuesday. “Instead, the
conversation over the last few days has been over white supremacy groups.”
Such a weak statement in the midst of the Trump campaign’s massive momentum comes just days after an interview in which Trump repeatedly declined to disavow former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke of Louisiana, who has endorsed Trump for president. The billionaire blowhard has also gained the endorsements of some far-right politicos in Europe.
To be fair, in December Ryan forcefully rejected a plan by Trump to ban all Muslims from entering the United States in the wake of ISIS terrorist attacks.
“I try to stay out of the ups and downs of the primary, but I’ve also said when I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and a country, I will speak up,” Ryan said this morning, without mentioning Trump by name.
“If a person wants to be the nominee of the party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people’s prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said in January 2009 that his top priority was to make Barack Obama a one-term president, joined in the condemnations this afternoon after exiting a party luncheon. He did not reference Trump by name, but denounced “one of our presidential candidates and his seeming ambivalence about David Duke and KKK.”
“Let me make it perfectly clear: Senate Republicans condemn David Duke, the KKK, and his racism,” McConnell said. “That is not the view of Republicans that have been elected to the United States Senate, and I condemn his comments in the most forceful way.”
