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Former Speaker Paul Ryan, zombie-eyed granny starver, on CBS Mornings: Dump Trump [1]
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Date: 2023-06-13
CBS Mornings had former House Speaker Paul Ryan on this morning for 10 minutes of back and forth “to discuss the indictment of former President Donald Trump on federal charges related to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House. He also discusses why he thinks Trump is guaranteed to lose in 2024 if he is the nominee. Air Date: Jun 13, 2023”.
Right out of the gate Ryan says he’s been a never-Trumper for some time, and says “I want to win and if we nominate Trump we’re going to lose.” He then rattles off a number of elections where he blames Trump for the failure of Republicans to win.
When morning host Gayle King references Marco Rubio saying that Trump may have done wrong things, but indicting him would harm the country, Ryan responds with this. He argues the indictment in New York City was petty and political, but the documents case is different and serious stuff. He doesn’t think Rubio is entirely wrong about the politicization, but this is about national security.
He thinks Trump will do a good job pushing the weaponization of the justice department as a defense, but he doesn’t see core suburban voters going for him, certainly not in Wisconsin. When King asks him about Trump’s devoted corps of supporters, Ryan says they will get him through the primaries, but that’s not enough to get him through in the general election.
In short Trump is an unelectable loser who is dragging the party down. “If we nominate somebody not named Donald Trump, we’re going to beat Joe Biden.” He refuses to pick any favorites among the crowd saying it’s too early, but “any one of them could beat Joe Biden.”
Tony Dokoupil points out the only candidate saying Trump can’t win is Chris Christie. Ryan kind of acknowledges that, but points out that the only way to the nomination is through Trump and he’s so vindictive they’re afraid to call him out. As Ryan puts it, being targeted by Trump is like having the Eye of Sauron on you.
Ryan comes right out and says he can say stuff like this because he doesn't have any political ambitions these days. He says the key to winning is the combined MAGA coalition and the suburban base. If Trump is the nominee the suburban base won’t be there.
Nate Burleson notes that as the race becomes more crowded, doesn’t that help Trump? Ryan acknowledges it could — he figures Trump can count on getting 33% and the rest divided 6 ways isn’t going to stop Trump. Ryan’s hope is people will drop out after Super Tuesday if a clear Trump alternative seems to be gaining ground. But, right now he sees Trump as having a straight shot through the primaries.
Dopkoupil then shifts the conversation to Fox News and the huge settlement they had to pay out for spreading lies about Dominion and the 2020 election. It gets interesting as Ryan is on the board of Fox. He says he’s not going to disengage from Fox because it’s so important in keeping conservatism going in the right direction, and he really doesn’t want to discuss legal matters as a board member.
He then goes on to talk about the conservative movement is currently in turmoil and Trump is at the center of the that turmoil. If they can get past Trump, “the conservative movement will be viable and majoritarian.” Ryan thinks the 2024 election will see Conservatives take back the Senate, will be winning majorities — as long as Trump is not the nominee. (And Fox will be part of the that.)
Burleson (paraphrasing) then brings up what Republicans are doing around the country: banning books, going after trans rights, call it fighting wokeism — how does Ryan feel about that?
Ryan distances himself saying he’s not a culture war guy (although they do have some points). He’s more focused on the debt, China, the future of the country — and reversing all the damage Joe Biden is doing. He is not a culture warrior — he’s a Jack Kemp guy who believes in inclusive politics and solving problems.
The hosts do a little bit of congratulating Ryan on his time in Washington, when he and Kevin McCarthy were “young guns” and point out he’s still young enough to have a future in politics. At which point Ryan gets in one last zinger: “In 25 years I’ll still be younger than Joe Biden.” They all chuckle.
Again, here’s the link to the interview if you want to see the atrocity for yourself.
Ryan has zero relevance to the Republican Party today, other than his role is getting us to this point. He’s got himself a cushy gig and is doing just fine thank you. He may be a never-Trumper now, but it was full speed ahead while Ryan was still in Congress. The media has always taken him seriously even though he’s always been a champion of some of the worst ideas the party has embraced. You may have heard how the deficit exploded under Trump? Guess whose fingerprints are all over it?
Charles P. Pierce has been on Ryan’s case for years: here’s a classic from 2017. I’m going to excerpt it all here because the media will never mention it and collective amnesia is what America does. There’s a reason Pierce refers to him as “the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin.”
The Only Way Paul Ryan Wins Is if Millions of Americans Lose The GOP Tax Bill is the culmination of a dark, dangerous dream. If you want to be a good American citizen, and an American citizen that likes to believe that we are a nation that has progressed at all in establishing social justice, a viable social-safety net, and at least a passing attempt at achieving social and economic equality, here is what you have to do now. Ignore any news report that calls what the Congress did “historic” in any sense except the ironic. Ignore any news report that prioritize what a “win” this is for the Congress and for the president*. Ignore any news report that describes what the Congress did on Tuesday as “keeping a campaign promise.” Ignore any news report that describes without the appropriate scorn the fact that this bill culminates a decades-long dream of Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin. This culmination is roughly akin to the New Orleans Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878’s having been the “culmination” of a successful breeding program for the Aedes aegypti. Ignore all of this and concentrate on what’s really happening to the country. x The United States Senate just passed the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill. Terrible Individual Mandate (ObamaCare)Repealed. Goes to the House tomorrow morning for final vote. If approved, there will be a News Conference at The White House at approximately 1:00 P.M. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2017 Tweet from Trump: The United States Senate just passed the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill. Terrible Individual Mandate (ObamaCare)Repealed. Goes to the House tomorrow morning for final vote. If approved, there will be a News Conference at The White House at approximately 1:00 P.M. Paul Ryan dreamed of this day because Paul Ryan dreams of plutocracy. And now, with this bill, he has successfully arranged the first piece of his career-long effort to turn the clock of the American economy back to the 1890s. When he comes for what he calls “entitlement reform”—which he will, as soon as this idiot bill explodes the deficit—that will be the second piece. The Supreme Court (through Citizens United, McCutcheon, and Shelby County) already has cooperated in this great project. The president* is on board because he’s basically made of greed and ignorance. The large media conglomerates will go along for the ride because they are conglomerates first, and news-gathering entities second. This state of affairs could well be generational, and there’s no indication that the Second Gilded Age will be as vulnerable to progressive ideas as the first one turned out to be. The franchise is under assault. Citizenship itself is under assault. This is the world about which Paul Ryan has dreamed since he was a young lad, heir to a substantial fortune, yet going to college on Social Security survivor’s benefits that you and I and our parents paid for. You’re welcome again, dickhead. This is the world about which Paul Ryan dreams in his 13-room Georgian mansion in downtown Janesville, Wisconsin. He was born well and he married well. He has had few moments in his adult life in which the government wasn’t picking up his tab. Golden bootstraps, this guy had, and we paid for most of them. So now he gets his chance and, by god, he’s making the most of it. Go to the end of this video and look at him, with his shit-eating grin as some protesters are hustled out of the gallery. (Dammit, you have to be a Republican congressman from South Carolina to get away with that!) Notice the coy way he drops one foot behind the other while the members of his brainless caucus, many of them with utterly no clue about what they’re actually voting for, chuckle and applaud like kids at the circus. Listen to the retrograde language of disenfranchisement and oligarchy: "Here is what it speaks to, in what I truly believe is a generational and defining moment for this nation. Our tax code is so broken that it undermines the very thing that makes our nation exceptional in the first place. It punishes hard work. It discourages our entrepreneurial spirit. It dims freedom and free enterprise. It limits our potential of our own people…The mission that drives us here today is to restore this beautiful American idea." Jesus God Almighty, what a fake. His tax bill, his defining generational moment, guarantees that his grandchildren, and those of the president*, and those of the Republican donor class, which is this bill’s only true constituency, never will have to work a day in their lives. The defining generational moment maintains the egregious carried-interest deduction, which every single presidential candidate on both sides of the aisle in 2016 agreed was nothing more than a goodie bag for a singularly non-productive industry that nearly killed the economy entirely. Why didn’t his Social Security payments discourage his entrepreneurial spirit? Why haven’t four decades at the public trough destroyed his work ethic? Why hasn’t his freedom dimmed? (No, I know freedom can’t dim. It’s not my fault the guy’s a hack with words as well as with numbers.) Of course, the farce wasn’t complete until the early hours of Wednesday morning, when the Senate passed this dog’s breakfast by the customary 51-48 margin. (Other casualties included Susan Collins’s reputation, Bob Corker’s integrity, and the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, courtesy of Lisa Murkowski.) And there even was a final, extra layer of burlesque. It seems that, in his haste to ensure his immortality, Speaker Ryan had rushed the bill through while it still contained provisions that were illegitimate under Senate rules. So, the House had to vote on it again before shipping it down to the president*, whose signature would make the heist complete and the getaway, clean. This, of course, comes as the economy is still recovering from the damage done to it when the entire American entrepreneurial spirit was dedicated to developing more sophisticated financial instruments to steal the nation’s wealth, something that this tax bill makes even more likely in the future. This is the final commitment of the national economy to the magic asterisks on which the conservative economic folly has been based ever since the 1980 campaign. The whole megillah depends on ludicrous growth projections and ridiculous faith in the essential patriotism of the American corporation. This bill will give the plutocrats more money to sit on, period, and that’s because it’s what the bill was designed to do, if it was designed to do anything at all, having been slapped together on the fly to draw all those “needed legislative victory” stories that we’re going to be reading over the holidays. This was an appalling day in the United States Congress. And all I can add to it is something seasonal, something written the last time self-government handed itself over to plutocrats, sharpers, and raiders of the public purse. “Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more. “They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!” If the spirits are about, I know a lovely 13-room Georgian mansion in Wisconsin they might want to drop by for a bit of a chat.
Addendum: I’m watching the circus going on in Miami. Lots of chatter by talking heads trying to fill time, lots of crowd shots — but no cameras in the courtroom.
The local ABC channel I was watching just dropped the spectacle to run… Judge Judy. (They got back to Miami after a bit.)
Oh, and Trump pleads not guilty to 37 Federal Charges.
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