June 15, 2018

Have You Seen the Latest News? Paul Ryan Probably Hasn’t.

The House speaker always has a convenient excuse for not responding to Trump’s latest scandal.

Alex Edelman/CNP via ZUMA Wire

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On Thursday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was asked about Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, whose corporate-friendly tenure has been derailed by a series of increasingly embarrassing scandals. Pruitt, a conservative favorite who holds a cabinet-level post, has been in the news for weeks, and his lavish spending falls right in the sweet-spot of congressional oversight. But if the buck doesn’t stop at Ryan’s office, the news apparently does.

“Frankly I haven’t paid that close attention to it,” Ryan said. “I don’t know enough about what Pruitt has or has not done to give you a good comment.”

Well, okay, he’s a busy guy. But this is hardly a one-off thing. For nearly two years, pleading ignorance has been Ryan’s go-to response basically anytime he’s questioned about what someone in President Donald Trump’s circle says or does.

When asked to explain the difference between the sexual abuse allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (who he condemned) and Trump (who he continues to support):

“I don’t know the answer to that. I haven’t spent my time reviewing the difference in these two cases.”

On the indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort:

“They made an indictment. I really have nothing to add because I haven’t even read it, so I’m not going to speculate on something I haven’t read.”

On Trump’s threat to release “tapes” of his conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey:

“I’ve decided I’m not going to comment on the tweets of the day, or of the hour. I haven’t seen them all, to be candid with you.”

On Comey’s testimony to Congress:

“I didn’t clear my schedule for a hearing in the Senate today.”

On whether Jeff Sessions misled Congress:

“I would just refer you to the Senate Judiciary Committee. I’d check the transcript on all of that. So I can’t speak to what the Judiciary Committee transcript is. Frankly, I haven’t read that.”

On Trump triggering a minor international incident with China:

“You think I’m going to sit here and comment on the daily tweets?”

On the FBI subpoening Trump lawyer Michael Cohen:

“I didn’t read the article.”

On Trump attacking the head of a small union local in Indiana:

On Trump’s treatment of women:

“I’m not going to get into the day-to-day, up and down of this campaign”

On Trump’s support for torture:

“I’m not going to take the bait this morning”

On the incredibly optimistic growth projections in the Trump budget, which he supported:

“I haven’t seen the details yet.”

On a flurry of reports about Trump’s treatment of women (again):

“Forget about the buzz of the day, and forget what Twitter storm is going on, I don’t know, in the last 20 minutes”

On Trump, at a 2017 roast:

“Every morning I wake up in my office and I scroll through Twitter to see which tweets I will have to pretend I didn’t see later on.”

Someone buy this man a magazine subscription!

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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