Ryan leaves door open to accepting GOP nomination: ‘Who knows?’

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is refusing to definitively rule out the possibility that he would accept the Republican presidential nomination if the GOP convention is deadlocked.

“You know, I haven’t given any thought to this stuff,” Ryan told CNBC’s John Harwood in an interview published late Tuesday night. “People say, ‘What about the contested convention?’ I say, well, there are a lot of people running for president. We’ll see. Who knows.”

{mosads}Ryan emphasized that he made a conscious decision not to run for president, but he left the door open to accepting the nomination as a potential last-ditch solution.

“I actually think you should run for president if you’re going to be president, if you want to be president,” he said. “I’m not running for president. I made that decision, consciously, not to.”

The likelihood of a contested convention increased on Tuesday after Republican presidential candidate John Kasich scored a victory over front-runner Donald Trump in his home state of Ohio, leaving a tougher path for Trump to clinch the nomination.