Ryan pushes back on ‘triumph of Trumpism over Ryanism’

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who announced his retirement last week, in an interview on Sunday pushed back on the notion that historians will write about the “triumph of Trumpism over Ryanism.”

“No, I just don’t see it like that,” Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” while pointing to his accomplishments.

{mosads}“One of the first things I fought for when I first got here was tax reform. That hadn’t been done since 1986, the year I got my driver’s license. That is now done,” Ryan told host Chuck Todd.

“Since I’ve been become Speaker, I’ve spent a great deal of time with our intelligence community, our military. And I got, I became greatly concerned about the state of our military. And so I really focused on a rebuild of our military. That is now done and underway. I’m very, very pleased with that,” he said.

“And now enterprise zones are now law of the land. So there are so many things that I’ve gone through,” he added.

“The one thing that obviously I care a great deal about is entitlement reform, in particular health-care entitlement reform. I feel gratified that ever since I was Budget chair, the House every term has passed a budget, to balance the budget and pay out— pay down the debt. But we have not gotten that through the Senate or the White House. And I’m gratified that we passed the health-care bill out of the House, the biggest entitlement reform bill ever. But it didn’t go into law. It failed by a vote in the Senate,” he said.

Ryan in announcing his retirement last week touted the GOP tax cuts passed in December as his top achievement as Speaker.

Ryan on Sunday said that “one person’s not going to solve all of those things.”

“I feel like I’ve done a lot to advance that debate. And again I’m not going away from the entire scene … I’m going to be advancing these things.”

Ryan also said President Trump was disappointed to learn that the Speaker was retiring.