House Speaker Paul Ryan has gone out of his way to praise and defend Donald Trump since the election, but while it appears the two are getting along just fine, not everyone is ready to let their guard down. It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that Ryan was telling reporters that “he wasn’t there yet” when it came to supporting the Republican nominee. Not that long ago that he was criticizing Trump for his “racism” and telling his colleagues that he would no longer support or defend Trump in public. The conservatives who have felt betrayed by the GOP establishment for years hope that Trump is keeping his eyes wide open.
One such conservative, Michelle Malkin, said this week that Trump had more to fear from Republicans than Democrats. Speaking to Lou Dobbs on Fox Business Channel, Malkin said, “I believe that this so-called GOP leadership is going to pose even more headaches and will be a bigger threat to Donald Trump and his American sovereignty agenda than the outright liberals will be.
“And that’s always been the case as long as I’ve covered politics for the last 25 years,” she continued. “It’s the Republicans who pay lip service to American workers, the American economy, strong borders. Again and again and again they’ve been shown to be phonies and liars and we’re going to go through it all over again.”
Malkin then turned her attention to the House Speaker.
“In particular, Paul Ryan is – and I’m not going to mince words, I’ve said it before – I believe he is one of the biggest crap-weasels in the Republican Party,” she said. “He is a threat. There are some Johnny-come-latelys who are coming late to the party who are realizing he is NOT Donald Trump’s friend.”
Dobbs, on the other hand, thought that by embracing Ryan as a friend, Trump was demonstrating how effective he would be in office.
“I will not pretend objectivity in this at all, I think that Donald Trump is going to be one of the great presidents this country has ever had,” Dobbs said. “But I think that Donald Trump has been as generous, as open as he could be with a man who not only didn’t think that Donald Trump would win but did all he could to make sure he did not win.”
This right here. We can wait and wonder about Ryan’s intentions, but Trump is no fool. If the Republicans try to manipulate Trump into choosing their agenda over his, they will quickly realize that. They have a golden opportunity right now to make good on promises they’ve been selling for a long time, and an opportunity to make things right with an angry conservative base. They would not be wise to squander them.
