President Donald Trump and Paul Ryan will hash out their differences tonight over dinner at the White House.
Trump throttled the speaker’s legislative agenda yesterday when he made a deal with Democrats to keep the government open through mid-December and refill FEMA’s coffers that Ryan had fiercely opposed.
The GOP leader had slammed the plan as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘unworkable’ only to have Trump take Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer’s side shortly after.
Ryan is said to be fuming privately. He was clearly chagrined when the topic came up during a live interview this morning in Washington.
President Donald Trump and Paul Ryan will hash out their differences tonight over dinner at the White House
‘Yeah, I sort of noticed that,’ he told the New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman after the journalist reminded him of Trump’s betrayal.
Asked to share his feelings on the blindside Ryan, sighed, looked at the ceiling, and sighed again before answering Weisman’s question.
Ryan said it’s his belief that the president was motivated to make the deal by his desire for a ‘bipartisan moment’ in the face of massive storms ransacking southern states.
‘What the president didn’t want to do is have some partisan fight in the middle of the response to this,’ Ryan said. ‘He wanted to make sure that in this moment of national crisis, where our country’s getting hit by two horrible hurricanes, he wanted to have a bipartisan response and not a food fight on the timing of the debt limit attached to this bill.’
At a meeting with congressional leaders that Ryan attended, Trump aligned himself with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, leaving GOP leaders in the room with egg on their faces.
Three hours after Ryan slapped down Democrats’ proposal to raise the debt ceiling for a limited run of three months in exchange for the votes Republicans’ needed to approve hurricane aid, Trump directed him to do it anyway.
The White House has repeatedly said that it’s up to Ryan to run the House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to run the Senate. But when presented with a deal that Trump thought the Republicans shouldn’t be passing up, he overrode their authority.
Ryan said Thursday that he personally believed that legislation raising the debt limit should have lasted longer, for the credit market’s sake.
‘But he wanted to make sure that we had a bipartisan moment in response to these hurricanes,’ he said of Trump.
At a meeting with congressional leaders that Ryan attended, Trump aligned himself with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, leaving GOP leaders in the room with egg on their faces
The House Speaker was much more optimistic when it came to working with Trump on taxes.
‘On tax reform, he’s seriously involved in the details, very very engaged,’ the House speaker assured.
The White House explained yesterday that Trump made the deal with Democrats to ‘clear the deck’ for tax reform this fall. They’ve been promising a bill by September that can clear the upper chamber by the end of the calendar year.
‘We want America to wake up on New Year’s Day 2018 with a new tax system,’ Ryan declared at the Times event this morning.