Matthew Boyle at Breitbart has posted audio of Paul Ryan from last October, 3 days after the infamous lewd audio of Trump came out, where he was distancing himself from Trump over the controversial comments.
Breitbart has titled this “Audio Emerges of When Paul Ryan Abandoned Donald Trump: ‘I Am Not Going to Defend Donald Trump—Not Now, Not in the Future’” and here’s how they started the piece:
On a never-before-released private October conference call with House Republican members, House Speaker Paul Ryan told his members in the U.S. House of Representatives he was abandoning then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump forever and would never defend him ever again.
This is clearly an attack on Ryan as they are trying to drive a wedge between him and Trump.
Here’s the audio. Skip to the 1 minute mark to save time:
The problem with all of this is that you can’t divorce these comments from their context. This was right when Trump’s horribly lewd comments came out a month before the election, in which it looked like it would most certainly doom the candidate. The comments themselves were indefensible and of course the media was running with them as hard and as much as they could.
When Ryan is talking about not defending Trump – then or in the future – he was clearly talking about those comments. He even reiterated his stance toward the end of the video, virtually repeating himself.
In that context I totally understand why Paul Ryan would distance himself from Trump. He was worried that Hillary would win and that she might have a Democrat Congress to boot. So he was going to do everything he could to help Republicans win.
Obviously Breitbart got this recording from a member of Congress, perhaps one who doesn’t like Ryan’s leadership on the Obamacare replacement and wants to put hostility between him and Trump in order to destroy him.
Or maybe Breitbart was saving this for a rainy day and are using it now for the same purpose.
Whatever the reason this is clearly an attack on Ryan in the name of Trump. And honestly it smacks of something a Democrat would do.