Those are very close to the words Ryan used in the long months before he endorsed Trump, telling CNN on May 6, “I’m not there right now”.
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President Barack Obama yesterday blasted Trump as unfit to be president and questioned why any Republican would support the NY businessman, who is seeking his first public office.
But on Tuesday the program again went off course, as the Republican nominee seemed to upend a fragile GOP détente by revealing he would not endorse Ryan – or Arizona Sen. Yet their party’s presidential nominee would not bless them in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday.
On June 14, less than two weeks after announcing his endorsement, Ryan was confronted with Trump’s renewed push, following the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando that weekend, for a halt on Muslim immigration into the US.
But Nehlen, who has referred to Ryan as “Lyin’ Ryan” (reminiscent of Trump’s own attacks of his presidential primary opponents), defended Trump’s response to Khan, saying it was Khan who had “attacked, ridiculed and attempted to humiliate Mr. Trump and his positions on critical national security issues”.
The speaker also shrugged off Trump saying earlier this week he wasn’t “there yet” on endorsing Ryan in his upcoming primary next Tuesday.
Trump’s running mate, vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, endorsed Ryan.
Trump later lashed out at the media’s coverage of the controversy.
Later, at a rally in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Pence suggested Trump speaks “straight from his heart, straight from his mind” and doesn’t have time for “thousands of rules of political correctness”.
“But I want to make clear to you that there’s really nothing more that I can add to the very strong feelings I have about my family, my friends and their sacrifice, and the fact that you not only have to respect but love the family members who have made these sacrifices”, he said. “Other than the Native Americans among us, who we cherish, our fellow Americans, all of us, are the descendants of people who came from somewhere else”, Pence said.
Nehlen has also attracted national attention beyond Trump.
And he hasn’t been shy about criticizing Trump.
Trump’s comments come as he is under the most severe bipartisan fire of his campaign following his criticism of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son Humayun Khan, died in Iraq in 2004.
“Almost 70% of the voters thought that those comments about the Khan family were out of bounds”.
“I talked to Donald Trump this morning about my support for Paul Ryan, our longtime friendship”, Pence told Fox News in a phone interview.
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“The question I think that they have to ask themselves is, if you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable: Why are you still endorsing him?” News stories displayed here appear in our category for General and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.com and The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization.
