Trump camp suggests Ryan unfit to be speaker

During a phone interview with Fox News on Friday, Trump said he was “very, very surprised” at Ryan’s comments. “It’s hard to believe,” he said, adding, “It doesn’t bother me at all.”

His tweets, however, suggest otherwise.

“So many great endorsements yesterday, except for Paul Ryan!” Trump tweeted. “We must put America first and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Roughly 90 minutes later, Trump came back with a sharp critique of another comment Ryan made Thursday. “Paul Ryan said that I inherited something very special, the Republican Party. Wrong, I didn't inherit it, I won it with millions of voters!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The subtle difference Trump highlighted was a piercing remark that speaks to the rift between mainstream Republicans and the polarizing, unconventional candidate who has risen to become the face of the party. His proposal to ban Muslims f-rom entering the U.S. and refusal to disavow David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan led to Ryan’s implicit rebuke of the candidate throughout the primary, but Trump’s rhetoric has resonated with millions of voters, who have come out in droves across the country to support his candidacy.

Trump has said it’s imperative to unite the party — though he’s pushed back against complete unity, emphasizing that certain Republicans who have been critical of him should go their own way. During an interview with Sirius XM and “Breitbart News Daily,” Trump said on Friday morning that he liked Ryan but expressed some reservations about his most recent critic.

“He’s doing it under the banner of unity, when in actuality that's the opposite of unity,” Trump said of Ryan’s remarks. “I've also had many people say that I'm better off, but I don't believe that. I think we should have unity. I think it would be better to have him. But it's just too bad. Many people think I'm better off. Who knows?”

Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson went much further than her boss, suggesting that the Wisconsin Republican is unfit for his leadership role if he can’t support the party’s presumptive nominee.

Asked plainly by CNN’s John Berman whether Ryan is fit to be speaker if he can’t come around to supporting Trump, Pierson responded, “No, because this is about the party.”

Ryan suggested the onus was on Trump to show he can unite the different wings of the Republican Party, but Pierson disagreed, noting that since Trump has yet to clinch 1,237 delegates, he’s only the presumptive nominee.

“We are a party. Paul Ryan needs to be a — he’s the leader right now,” Pierson said. “We’re told Donald Trump is only the presumptive nominee. He’s not the nominee until 1,237. So really it’s incumbent on Paul Ryan to help bring unity to the party.”

The same sentiment was expressed Thursday evening by Fox News host Sean Hannity, who told viewers he is no longer “ready to support” Ryan as speaker.

“I'm thinking maybe we need a new speaker,” Hannity said during his show. “Thoughts?”

Trump convention manager Paul Manafort struck a more conciliatory tone, telling MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Friday afternoon that the split among Republicans’ support for Trump will eventually subside. What’s most important, he continued, is that Ryan said he is prepared to support the nominee.

“People are gonna be glad that he's at the top of the ticket,” Manafort said. “The reason he’s won overwhelmingly in the primaries is because he expanded the base of the Republican Party with thousands and thousands of people, you know, crossing over or in many cases changing their registration to participate in the Republican Party to vote for Donald Trump. That strength, those coattail of capabilities, are going to help the Republican ticket.”

Ryan’s office confirmed that the two will meet in Washington on Thursday.

“Having both said we need to unify the party, Speaker Ryan has invited Donald Trump to meet with members of the House Republican leadership in Washington on Thursday morning to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November,” his office said in a statement. “The Speaker and Mr. Trump will also meet separately, along with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.”

Pierson said the businessman is likely to tell Ryan that by refusing to support him, he’s also going against the will of the people.

“Well, I think he’s gonna talk to Paul Ryan and just say look, you are not just against me. You are against a lot of your voters, and this is something that has been indicative,” Pierson said. “For the last couple of cycles you have had the leadership rejecting its own voters, silencing them, ignoring them, campaigning on one issue and not following through, and that’s why we have a nomination of Donald Trump.”

Pierson said the last two Republican presidential nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, weren’t true conservatives, but conservatives “were told to hold our noses and vote for the sake of the party.”

“These same people are now telling us that because their guy didn’t win, they want to hurt the party,” she said. “The issue here isn’t about Donald Trump. If you can’t hold yourself to the standard that you hold everyone else, the problem is with you.”
 

Priebus, who declared Trump the presumptive nominee Tuesday following a decisive victory in Indiana that knocked Ted Cruz out of the race (and subsequently John Kasich), hopes to mitigate the brewing feud between the man who will top the GOP ticket in the fall and the man who will chair the Republican National Convention this summer.

“My view is just relax and be gracious and I’ll talk to Paul and we’ll try to work on this,” Priebus said he told Trump.

“I'm comfortable with the idea that it is going to take some time in some cases for people to work through differences,” he continued. “We talked about it and talked about it multiple times and they're very comfortable with sitting down with Donald Trump, and it may be at my office, it may be somewhe-re else but we're going to have that meeting to start the process of unifying.”

Trump surrogate and former presidential candidate Ben Carson told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” he was “very disappointed” by Ryan’s comments and suggested he was being immature. He added that a divided Republican Party ensures a Democratic president in 2017.

“I hope Speaker Ryan and many others, as time goes on, will begin to understand that, realize that we have to work together,” Carson said. “You don’t have another choice, so you get behind the choice that you have, whether you like them or not.”

YouTube vloggers and Trump supporters Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Ric-hardson — better known as Diamond and Silk — called for Americans to vote out politicians who won’t respect the will of the voters, beginning with Ryan.

“It's time to vote out these career politicians that don't want to honor who we the people voted for. Let's start with @SpeakerRyan #VoteOut,” they tweeted.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, seemed to revel in the GOP's identity crisis, telling reporters on Friday — with a smirk — that he couldn't begin to guess what will come of the civil war.

"I think you have to ask Speaker Ryan what the implications of his comments are," Obama said.