Exclusive — Discussion About GOP Replacement to Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House Intensifies in White House, Congress
Republican officials in Congress and the White House are now openly discussing finding a GOP replacement to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as Speaker of the House, after Ryan failed to pass the American Health Care Act out of the House and misled the public and President Donald Trump when he promised repeatedly the bill would pass.
Ryan was caught on an audio file from October—obtained by Breitbart News and published a couple weeks ago—saying he is “not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future.” While the audio file does not make the comments clear, Ryan’s staff later claimed that it was specifically about the Access Hollywood tape scandal from the election. The audio tape of Ryan, recorded from a House GOP members’ conference call, does not make that context clear.
Many allies of the president and several White House officials over the weeks since have confirmed to Breitbart News that the president is concerned that Ryan may not have his—or his agenda’s—best interests at heart. Ryan’s failure to deliver the votes on healthcare cement Trump’s skepticism of Ryan, they say.
“This is another example of the staff not serving the president well and the weakness of the Paul Ryan speakership,” a source close to President Trump told Breitbart News. “This calls into question once again the speaker’s commitment to supporting Donald Trump and his agenda.”
“Speaker Ryan proved today that he does not have the best interests of the President at heart,” said another source close to the president. “He sold out the president and showed his word can be taken with a grain of salt. There is only one course of action that should be taken to move past this catastrophe and that is the swift removal of Paul Ryan from the speakership.”
White House sources tell Breitbart News that the president is very frustrated with Ryan and feels that he has saved him multiple times already. After the election in November, it was widely reported that there were enough Republican votes to remove Ryan as Speaker—and the only reason conservatives kept him is that Trump won the election and embraced Ryan. But now Trump may perceive Ryan as a burden rather than someone who can help enact his agenda.
A senior Senate GOP aide questioned whether Ryan has the chops to continue in the position.
“A tale as old as time, our establishment leadership continue advocating for moderate pieces of legislation after ignoring conservative input,” the Senate aide said. “How can President Donald Trump trust Speaker Paul Ryan in the future after this failure? If he couldn’t deliver on something so simple as repealing Obamacare, will he be able to deliver on complex pieces of legislation?”
House Republicans are also questioning whether Ryan can remain as Speaker after this abysmal failure.
“If Speaker Ryan cannot pass his RyanCare plan and negotiations had to be taken to the Oval Office by non-leadership members of the conference, it is certainly time to evaluate his effectiveness as the Speaker of the House,” a senior House GOP aide told Breitbart News.
Senior aides from at least seven House GOP offices—only two from the House Freedom Caucus—tell Breitbart News that there is significant discussion conference-wide about a replacement to Ryan as Speaker of the House.
It has gotten so far along in the process that alternative names are being thrown around—anyone from House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), to former Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)—to Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Peter Roskam (R-IL), according to one senior House GOP aide.
But nobody has yet emerged as an official challenger to Ryan, and it is unclear if anyone will. All of those names and more, aides say, would be more open to proactively supporting President Trump, something Ryan has repeatedly refused to do.
The fact that Frelinghuysen—a committee chairman of the powerful House panel that oversees the disbursement of government cash–came out publicly against the legislation is proof that Ryan has problems inside the House GOP conference that go much deeper than the House Freedom Caucus. It is worth noting that Frelinghuysen is a direct descendant of America’s founding fathers, and his family has served in Congress in every generation since the 1700s.
There are ongoing discussions in House offices conference-wide whether Republicans should use the same tactic that conservatives used in 2015 to remove now-former Speaker John Boehner from the House. Back then, Meadows—then just a member of the House Freedom Caucus—introduced what is called a resolution with a motion to vacate the chair. He did so just before August recess, allowing it to gain public support.
When it reached critical mass, and enough Republicans backed it publicly or privately, a group of members approached Boehner to inform him they had enough votes to remove him from the Speakership. To avoid the public embarrassment of a vote in which he would be defeated, Boehner resigned and allowed for the peaceful shift to his eventual successor, Ryan—which only happened after a tumultuous process. Members are beginning to wonder if it is now the time to use the same move on Ryan, given his disloyalty to Trump. Some Republicans want to wait for a smoke signal or sign from the White House that the president wants Ryan gone. Others want to just get it over with to help the president move on from the mess Ryan created.
Asked explicitly whether President Trump has confidence in Ryan remaining as Speaker, White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not answer Breitbart News, yes or no.
“The president believes Speaker Ryan has worked very hard to repeal and replace Obamacare and replace it with a patient centric healthcare system that lowers costs and increases choices,” Spicer said in an email on Thursday evening, not responding to follow-up emails pressing further for an explicit expression of confidence—or not—from the President in Ryan’s speakership.
But Spicer was asked if Ryan should resign if the vote fails during an interview with Fox News’s Eric Bolling, who was guest hosting on Thursday for Bill O’Reilly, and he said, “Absolutely not.”
Trump was asked in the Oval Office by reporters on Friday morning if Ryan should resign if and when the bill fails, and the President said no—for now.
“Trump said Friday at the White House that Ryan shouldn’t lose his job if the bill goes down,” Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs and Shannon Pettypiece wrote. “He also said ‘no’ when asked if the bill had been rushed or if he regretted pursuing a replacement of the Affordable Care Act ahead of other priorities such as a tax overhaul.”
After that question was asked of the President on Friday morning, Spicer was repeatedly asked the same thing Friday afternoon at his White House press briefing. Spicer referred back to the president’s comments, but added that he believes “The Speaker has done everything he can—he’s worked really closely with the president—and I think at the end of the day, I said this yesterday, you can’t force people to vote, but I think we’ve given them every single reason to fulfill every pledge that they’ve made and I think this is the right thing to do.”
Ryan’s office has not answered multiple inquiries from Breitbart News over the past several days as to whether he will resign to clear the way for President Trump’s larger agenda items.
Jacobs and Pettypiece, though, quoted a senior administration official to note that “The president’s aides are planning to blame Ryan if there is an embarrassing defeat on a bill that has been a Republican goal for more than seven years.”
The Bloomberg writers noted that when “asked whether Trump, Ryan, or the Freedom Caucus chairman, North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows, would be most to blame if the bill fails, the administration official said Ryan.”
They also quote NewsMax’s Chris Ruddy, a friend of Trump’s, who says that Ryan is not being helpful to Trump.
“I think Paul Ryan did a major disservice to President Trump. I think the president was extremely courageous in taking on health care and trusted others to come through with a program he could sign off on,” Ruddy said. “The President had confidence Paul Ryan would come up with a good plan and to me, it is disappointing.”
Bloomberg’s piece also questions the future of White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a Ryan ally who previously was Republican National Committee chairman and was also a central part of pushing this bill, alongside his longtime friend from Wisconsin.
“A Trump associate who requested anonymity to discuss the president’s views on the matter said that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus may also be imperiled,” Jacobs and Pettypiece wrote.
Bloomberg is hardly the only media outlet to question Ryan’s future.
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Republican officials in Congress and the White House are now openly discussing finding a GOP replacement to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as Speaker of the House, after Ryan failed to pass the American Health Care Act out of the House and misled the public and President Donald Trump when he promised repeatedly the bill would pass.
Ryan was caught on an audio file from October—obtained by Breitbart News and published a couple weeks ago—saying he is “not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future.” While the audio file does not make the comments clear, Ryan’s staff later claimed that it was specifically about the Access Hollywood tape scandal from the election. The audio tape of Ryan, recorded from a House GOP members’ conference call, does not make that context clear.
Many allies of the president and several White House officials over the weeks since have confirmed to Breitbart News that the president is concerned that Ryan may not have his—or his agenda’s—best interests at heart. Ryan’s failure to deliver the votes on healthcare cement Trump’s skepticism of Ryan, they say.
“This is another example of the staff not serving the president well and the weakness of the Paul Ryan speakership,” a source close to President Trump told Breitbart News. “This calls into question once again the speaker’s commitment to supporting Donald Trump and his agenda.”
“Speaker Ryan proved today that he does not have the best interests of the President at heart,” said another source close to the president. “He sold out the president and showed his word can be taken with a grain of salt. There is only one course of action that should be taken to move past this catastrophe and that is the swift removal of Paul Ryan from the speakership.”
White House sources tell Breitbart News that the president is very frustrated with Ryan and feels that he has saved him multiple times already. After the election in November, it was widely reported that there were enough Republican votes to remove Ryan as Speaker—and the only reason conservatives kept him is that Trump won the election and embraced Ryan. But now Trump may perceive Ryan as a burden rather than someone who can help enact his agenda.
A senior Senate GOP aide questioned whether Ryan has the chops to continue in the position.
“A tale as old as time, our establishment leadership continue advocating for moderate pieces of legislation after ignoring conservative input,” the Senate aide said. “How can President Donald Trump trust Speaker Paul Ryan in the future after this failure? If he couldn’t deliver on something so simple as repealing Obamacare, will he be able to deliver on complex pieces of legislation?”
House Republicans are also questioning whether Ryan can remain as Speaker after this abysmal failure.
“If Speaker Ryan cannot pass his RyanCare plan and negotiations had to be taken to the Oval Office by non-leadership members of the conference, it is certainly time to evaluate his effectiveness as the Speaker of the House,” a senior House GOP aide told Breitbart News.
Senior aides from at least seven House GOP offices—only two from the House Freedom Caucus—tell Breitbart News that there is significant discussion conference-wide about a replacement to Ryan as Speaker of the House.
It has gotten so far along in the process that alternative names are being thrown around—anyone from House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), to former Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)—to Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Peter Roskam (R-IL), according to one senior House GOP aide.
But nobody has yet emerged as an official challenger to Ryan, and it is unclear if anyone will. All of those names and more, aides say, would be more open to proactively supporting President Trump, something Ryan has repeatedly refused to do.
The fact that Frelinghuysen—a committee chairman of the powerful House panel that oversees the disbursement of government cash–came out publicly against the legislation is proof that Ryan has problems inside the House GOP conference that go much deeper than the House Freedom Caucus. It is worth noting that Frelinghuysen is a direct descendant of America’s founding fathers, and his family has served in Congress in every generation since the 1700s.
There are ongoing discussions in House offices conference-wide whether Republicans should use the same tactic that conservatives used in 2015 to remove now-former Speaker John Boehner from the House. Back then, Meadows—then just a member of the House Freedom Caucus—introduced what is called a resolution with a motion to vacate the chair. He did so just before August recess, allowing it to gain public support.
When it reached critical mass, and enough Republicans backed it publicly or privately, a group of members approached Boehner to inform him they had enough votes to remove him from the Speakership. To avoid the public embarrassment of a vote in which he would be defeated, Boehner resigned and allowed for the peaceful shift to his eventual successor, Ryan—which only happened after a tumultuous process. Members are beginning to wonder if it is now the time to use the same move on Ryan, given his disloyalty to Trump. Some Republicans want to wait for a smoke signal or sign from the White House that the president wants Ryan gone. Others want to just get it over with to help the president move on from the mess Ryan created.
Asked explicitly whether President Trump has confidence in Ryan remaining as Speaker, White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not answer Breitbart News, yes or no.
“The president believes Speaker Ryan has worked very hard to repeal and replace Obamacare and replace it with a patient centric healthcare system that lowers costs and increases choices,” Spicer said in an email on Thursday evening, not responding to follow-up emails pressing further for an explicit expression of confidence—or not—from the President in Ryan’s speakership.
But Spicer was asked if Ryan should resign if the vote fails during an interview with Fox News’s Eric Bolling, who was guest hosting on Thursday for Bill O’Reilly, and he said, “Absolutely not.”
Trump was asked in the Oval Office by reporters on Friday morning if Ryan should resign if and when the bill fails, and the President said no—for now.
“Trump said Friday at the White House that Ryan shouldn’t lose his job if the bill goes down,” Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs and Shannon Pettypiece wrote. “He also said ‘no’ when asked if the bill had been rushed or if he regretted pursuing a replacement of the Affordable Care Act ahead of other priorities such as a tax overhaul.”
After that question was asked of the President on Friday morning, Spicer was repeatedly asked the same thing Friday afternoon at his White House press briefing. Spicer referred back to the president’s comments, but added that he believes “The Speaker has done everything he can—he’s worked really closely with the president—and I think at the end of the day, I said this yesterday, you can’t force people to vote, but I think we’ve given them every single reason to fulfill every pledge that they’ve made and I think this is the right thing to do.”
Ryan’s office has not answered multiple inquiries from Breitbart News over the past several days as to whether he will resign to clear the way for President Trump’s larger agenda items.
Jacobs and Pettypiece, though, quoted a senior administration official to note that “The president’s aides are planning to blame Ryan if there is an embarrassing defeat on a bill that has been a Republican goal for more than seven years.”
The Bloomberg writers noted that when “asked whether Trump, Ryan, or the Freedom Caucus chairman, North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows, would be most to blame if the bill fails, the administration official said Ryan.”
They also quote NewsMax’s Chris Ruddy, a friend of Trump’s, who says that Ryan is not being helpful to Trump.
“I think Paul Ryan did a major disservice to President Trump. I think the president was extremely courageous in taking on health care and trusted others to come through with a program he could sign off on,” Ruddy said. “The President had confidence Paul Ryan would come up with a good plan and to me, it is disappointing.”
Bloomberg’s piece also questions the future of White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a Ryan ally who previously was Republican National Committee chairman and was also a central part of pushing this bill, alongside his longtime friend from Wisconsin.
“A Trump associate who requested anonymity to discuss the president’s views on the matter said that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus may also be imperiled,” Jacobs and Pettypiece wrote.
Bloomberg is hardly the only media outlet to question Ryan’s future.
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