House Speaker Paul Ryan has been famously coy on his thoughts on the presidential race, evading questions from reporters on everything from Donald Trump’s meteoric rise to the possibility of a brokered convention. This morning, he broke that silence.
Without naming names, Ryan blasted the Republican front-runner for his refusal to denounce the Ku Klux Klan and its former grand wizard David Duke, who has expressed his support for Trump. “If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican party, there can be no evasion and no games,” the speaker said from the podium at his weekly presser.
“This party does not prey on people’s prejudices,” Ryan added. “We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln.”
Ryan then said that he would stand behind and support the eventual Republican nominee.
Ryan’s words represent his most forceful and direct foray into the race to date—and on Super Tuesday, no less, when Trump is expected to sweep the cluster of 11 primaries. The speaker’s last explicit commentary on the race came in the aftermath of Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. “This is not conservatism,” Ryan said at the time. “Normally I do not comment about what’s going on in the presidential election; I will take an exception today.”
Since taking the gavel, the speaker has attempted to steer his messaging toward his conservative agenda, a five-planked legislative marker he’s promoted as a means of shielding his conference from the presidential fray.
But Trump’s waffling over his views on the KKK, first broadcast in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, have prompted those formerly mum on the race to speak out, including Ryan’s 2012 running mate, Mitt Romney. On Twitter yesterday, Romney called Trump’s dodge “a disqualifying and disgusting response . . . His coddling of repugnant bigotry is not in the character of America.”
“This is fundamental. And if someone wants to be our nominee, they must understand this,” Ryan closed his remarks. “I hope this is the last time I need to speak out on this race.”