House Speaks Paul Ryan greets US President Donald Trump as he arrives on stage to talk on the National Republican Congressional Committee March Dinner on the National Constructing Museum on March 20, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump won’t be the Republican Party’s White House nominee within the 2024 election, former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan predicted.
“Trump’s unelectability might be palpable by then,” Ryan said in an interview with consulting firm Teneo that aired Thursday. Ryan is vice chairman of the firm.
“Everyone knows that he’s far more more likely to lose the White House than anybody else running for president on our side of the aisle, so why would we wish to go together with that?” the previous lawmaker from Wisconsin said.
“Whether he runs or not, I do not really know if it matters,” Ryan added. “He is not going to be the nominee, I do not think.”
Ryan, who in 2012 was the presidential running mate of now-Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and succeeded John Boehner as House speaker in 2015, has worked within the private sector since leaving Congress in 2018.
Ryan had a tumultuous relationship with Trump before and after his one term within the White House.
As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump bombarded Ryan with insults, labeling him weak and disloyal. Ryan had refused to proceed campaigning for Trump late within the election, following the discharge of an Access Hollywood recording from 2005 through which Trump is heard bragging about groping women.
Since leaving elected office, Ryan has urged the GOP to ditch Trump, who stays the de facto leader of the party and the likeliest candidate to clinch the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Trump has openly floated the opportunity of launching one other White House bid, though he has yet to make an official announcement. Trump lost to President Joe Biden in 2020, but never conceded the race and continues to falsely claim the election was rigged against him.
Trump’s conspiracy claims before and after that election spurred hundreds of supporters to swarm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a joint session of Congress had convened to substantiate Biden’s victory. Ryan said he “found himself sobbing” as he watched the Capitol riot unfold, in keeping with a recent book.
In his interview with Teneo, Ryan said the one reason Trump remains to be in power is because “everybody’s afraid of him.”
“He’ll attempt to intimidate people out of the race so long as he can,” Ryan said.
That fear of Trump will cause other GOP presidential contenders to delay their decisions to run, waiting for “any individual else to take the primary plunge,” Ryan predicted. After Trump attacks that first person, “they’ll follow in behind,” Ryan said, likening the situation to a “prisoner’s dilemma.”
But that ultimately won’t stop would-be candidates from throwing their hats within the ring, he said.
“The one inexhaustible power in politics is ambition, you may count on that. There is a handful of people who find themselves going to run since it’s really the one cycle they’ll run, and they cannot wait until 2028,” Ryan said.
“They have to go now in the event that they’re ever going to go, and so they don’t need to die not ever trying,” he added.
“As soon as you get type of the herd mentality going, it’s unstoppable. So I believe the indisputable fact that he pulls a lot poorer than anybody else running for president as a Republican against a Democrat is enough right there,” Ryan said. “He’s gonna know this, and so whether he runs or not, I do not really know if it matters, he isn’t going to be the nominee, I do not think.”
