Republican leaders are scrambling to make the best of Donald Trump’s so-called presidential pivot from racist attacks on Mexican immigrants in general to a more narrowly tailored assault on the Mexican heritage of one particular American-born federal judge, dishing out excuses, rationalizations and baseless hopes for a more tactful nominee in the coming months. ‘That’s just a wrong thing to say’.
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That report was based on conversations with an unnamed longtime GOP donor who attended a NY campaign financing event with Trump earlier in the day.
“This is a war with radical Islam, it is not a war with Islam”, Ryan said.
“We can get angry and we can stay angry or we could channel that anger into action”, Ryan said in the video.
U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) waits to meet India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (not pictured), before Modi speaks at a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber in Capitol Hill, Washington, U.S., June 8, 2016. “I do not think a Muslim ban is in our country’s interests”. ‘I don’t think we should have a religious test on anyone.
‘I don’t support that policy as well, ‘ Ryan said.
The House GOP’s top official on the Armed Services Committee signaled on Thursday that he wants to bring back the threat of torture to help fight terrorists, referring to practices Donald Trump has also called for reviving on the campaign trail. Having first done so in February, on May 27 he again attacked the “Mexican” judge (born in IN, 1,332 miles from Mexico) who will preside at the trial, asserting that the Hoosier Mexican was unfit to preside because his ethnic heritage would incline him against Trump, the wall-building scourge of Mexican rapists.
Beginning on May 27 during a speech in San Diego, California – the city where Curiel hears cases in federal court – Trump has accused the him of being incapable of judging him fairly because he is of Mexican descent and Trump plans to wall off Mexico from the USA if he’s president. Ryan called Trump’s comments “textbook” racism. “That’s why I disavowed them completely”.
A senate aide said, “His comments poured gasoline on the fire and put every Republican in an incredibly uncomfortable position”.
Prior to Tuesday’s primary Pelosi formally announced that she endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. “I’m not there right now”.
“I think you have to be a little careful with the rhetoric”, McCaul told Politico.
“I don’t know the answer to that question”, Ryan said.
‘So I am not going to defend these kinds of comments, because they’re indefensible.
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“I believe in this job I have as speaker of the House that it is important that I help unify our party so that we’re at full strength in the fall so that we can win an election”, Ryan said. (See Megan McArdle and Jonathan Chait’s recent columns for two thoughtful and differing viewpoints on that topic.) But for now let’s give credit to Speaker Ryan where credit is due, for his forthright and repeated denunciation of Trump’s racist behavior.
