Ryan shrugs off questions about Bannon
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday shrugged off questions about President-elect Donald Trump’s newly appointed chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, saying it’s time to “look forward” and not backward.
{mosads}Democrats, civil-rights groups and some Republicans are calling on Trump to dump Bannon, the former executive at the right-wing Breitbart News, over concerns he’s promoted racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic stories on his website.
But in the first House GOP leadership news conference following Trump’s victory, Ryan dismissed questions about Bannon’s past and said Republicans now need to help Trump deliver on his campaign promises.
“The president is going to be judged on his results. [Bannon] is a person who helped him win an incredible victory and an incredible campaign,” Ryan told reporters after a closed-door meeting of House Republicans.
“The president is going to be judged on the results of this administration. And that’s why we’re very eager to get up and running, to help him with his transition, to help him make progress on the mandate that has been given to us from the American people.”
Ryan later was pressed by The Hill about Breitbart’s personal attacks against him and his family. Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart published a series of stories this year promoting Ryan’s GOP primary opponent, Paul Nehlen, and criticizing Ryan.
One story called Ryan a hypocrite for deriding Trump’s Muslim ban as a “religious test” while sending his own children to a Catholic school that uses a religious test for admissions. And on his radio show, Bannon mocked Ryan for “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.”
“I’m not worried about it. I’m not looking backward, I’m looking to the future,” Ryan replied. “I’m looking at how we make this work for the Americans people how we help President-elect Trump be the most successful president in our lifetimes, how we make good on the promises and get this country going again.”
“Our job is not to look backwards, our job is to look forward and make President-elect Trump as successful as possible, help him with the transition and make good on our commitment to the American people to fix this country’s big problems.”
In Tuesday’s GOP leadership elections, Ryan is expected to be nominated to serve again as Speaker of the House. He told rank-and-file Republicans in a morning conference meeting that he is being backed by both Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, his former House colleague.
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