Paul Ryan Shut Down Trump's Voter Fraud Claims, Then Defended Him
Does Paul Ryan believe in Donald Trump's sweeping claims of voter fraud? "I have no way of backing that up," he told Scott Pelley on last night 60 Minutes. "It doesn't matter to me. He won the election." Well, maybe it should matter. After all, the president-elect is trumpeting unfounded claims undermining an election he just won. Trump's surrogates have now decided that there's no such thing as facts, anyway-and besides, enough people believe him when he says it, so isn't that kind of like it being true?
Amazingly, this is essentially the same position the Speaker of the House is now taking:
"The way I see the tweets you're talking about, he's basically giving voice to a lot of people who have felt that they were voiceless. He's communicating with people in this country who've felt like they have not been listened to. He's going to be an unconventional president...who cares what he tweeted, you know, on some Thursday night, if we fix this country's big problems? That's just the way I look at this."
The Speaker, chief of another branch of government charged with checking the power of the president, is now of the opinion that it doesn't matter if the president spreads disinformation and falsehoods. What could go wrong?
How about the time Ryan called Trump's comments "textbook" racism? Pelley asked about that episode, too, which followed Donald Trump's claim that Indiana-born Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not fairly oversee the Trump University case because Curiel's parents were Mexican. Pelley asked how Ryan, who repeatedly disavowed Trump's statements and refused to campaign on the candidate's behalf during the final weeks of the election, could now instantly see the president-elect as an ally:
One of the major questions about our new government is whether the Republican-dominated Congress, led by Paul Ryan, will attempt to block any aspect of Trump's agenda. (Such as it is.) At this point, that notion is in its most basic form: Is Trump even aware of the concept of separation of powers? Is he aware the country is not just a rather large company where more than half the shareholders don't like him? Sunday night, Ryan maintained that, based on his conversations with the president-elect, Trump did understand how the federal government functions on a basic level. For the rest of us, that remains a leap of faith.
Ryan also threw cold water on the idea of a "deportation force," an understood requirement to pursue Trump's plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. He undermined the idea there will simply be a wall across the southern border-another Trump promise-and intimated border security was a more nuanced matter. If these points are anything to go on, Ryan's Congress will resist the more extreme and unrealistic dimensions of Trump's immigration policy. Whether he can control his own caucus will be another issue.
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Ryan, of course, has an agenda. In Pelley's telling, the Speaker took power "reluctantly" just over a year ago and is "an expert on the budget." But Ryan's goal for some time has been to reform (dismantle) social safety net programs like Medicare, Social Security, and, of course, Obamacare.
The Republican plan at present is to immediately "bring relief" to Americans by repealing the latter, but not implementing the repeal for as much as three years as the party comes up with a replacement program. Ryan described that plan as "patient-centered healthcare that gets everybody access to affordable healthcare coverage." Universal healthcare, then? Surely not. The plan would include coverage for preexisting conditions, keeping the age-26 rule, and graduating financial assistance (most likely subsidies) based on need. Kind of sounds like Obamacare, no?
From there, we journeyed to the land of "job-killing regulations," which have been so deadly that they've managed to bring 81 straight months of job growth and 4.6 percent unemployment. "We have a real economic growth problem in this country," Ryan said. U.S. GDP grew 3.2 percent in the third quarter of 2016, recovering from a downturn around the turn of the year to reflect strong growth since 2013. Nevertheless, Ryan pledged to roll back regulations-but not jeopardize the environment-to boost all these figures.
The best moment, however, was Pelley's point blank question: "Do you think the rich will benefit the most from your tax reform plan?" Ryan naturally dodged that, and Pelley ribbed him. (Both Ryan and Trump's plans have been assessed as heavily favoring top earners. Trump's plan would mean a tax increase for some in the middle class.) "You're a little shy when I ask you about the rich receiving the greatest part of the tax cuts," Pelley said with something approaching a smirk. Ryan trotted out the line that many small businesses file as individuals, which is true, although their benefit from top-bracket tax cuts has been questioned.
The real takeaway, though, is that line in non-defense defense of Trump's tweet. There's no evidence of voter fraud, Ryan said, but the president-elect is just speaking for his supporters. If Ryan is willing to overlook this to achieve the larger goal of cutting taxes and entitlement programs, what else is he willing to overlook?
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