Paul Ryan, the Republican former House speaker-turned-Fox Corp. board member, has summed up Donald Trump as a “populist, authoritarian narcissist.”
The former president is “not a conservative,” Ryan declared during a recent virtual interview hosted by CEO advisory firm Teneo that the Republican Accountability group unearthed and shared on X (née Twitter) on Wednesday.
Trump’s tendencies “are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good at any given moment,” Ryan said. “He doesn’t think in classical liberal-conservative terms. He thinks in an authoritarian way. And he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior.”
Ryan talked about how former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) had “paid for” their criticism of Trump with their congressional careers.
And he claimed more Republicans in Congress now wished they’d taken a stand against Trump when he was impeached for a second time for inciting the deadly U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
The House voted 232-197 in favor of impeaching Trump. The Senate voted 57 to 43 to convict Trump, 10 short of the 67 votes required for it to happen.
They thought “Trump was dead,” said Ryan. “They thought after Jan. 6, he wasn’t going to have a comeback, he was dead, so they figured, ‘I’m not going to take this heat, I’m not going to vote against this impeachment, because he’s gone anyway.’ But what’s happened is he’s been resurrected.”
There are “a lot of people who already regret not getting him out of the way when they could have,” he added. “So I think history will be kind to those people who saw what was happening and called it out, even though it was at the expense of their personal well-being.”
Ryan condemned Trump before the 2016 election before working alongside him as House speaker to pass major tax cuts. He left Congress in 2019 to become a director of Fox Corp., a position that has drawn him criticism for his apparent reluctance to call out the divisive rhetoric peddled on Fox News.
Last year, Ryan said “anybody not named Trump” would be a better option for the Republican Party in next year’s presidential election.
“We know we’re so much more likely to lose with Trump because of the fact that he is not popular with suburban voters that we’re gonna want to win,” Ryan told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney. “We lost the House, the Senate, the White House in the space of two years. I don’t want to repeat that. I want to win.”
“The only reason he stays where he is is because everybody’s afraid of him,” Ryan added in another interview. “They’re afraid of him going after them, hurting their own ambition. But as soon as you sort of get the herd mentality going, it’s unstoppable.”
In September, Ryan said February 2024 may mark a turning point for the party if Trump’s GOP presidential rivals consolidate to deprive him of the nomination.