Breitbart screen capture. I'm guessing that they're not big Paul Ryan fans.
I think I’m on safe ground speculating that Donald Trump was probably not Paul Ryan’s first, second or fourteenth choice to win the Republican presidential nomination.
He’s done relatively little to disguise his distaste for the orange blowhard. Ryan’s recent announcement that he will no longer defend the words and deeds of his party’s nominee (although he still intends to vote for him) was just the latest in a long succession of ten foot poles the Speaker has used to put distance between himself and the alleged billionaire.
Even before securing the GOP nomination, Trump made ominous rumblings that if he and Ryan didn’t get along, it would be bad news for Ryan. And after Trump made his attacks on Judge Curiel and the Khan family, Ryan felt compelled to make public statements saying, in effect, Please don’t judge the Republican Party by the disgusting bigot we nominated to be president.
Less than a week ago, Trump tweeted, “The Democrats have a corrupt political machine pushing crooked Hillary Clinton. We have Paul Ryan, always fighting the Republican nominee!”
Judging by Friday’s 2800-word lead story on Breitbart, titled He’s With Her: Inside Paul Ryan’s Months-Long Campaign to Elect Hillary Clinton President, the gloves are now officially off, and the Trump-Breitbart-Freedom Caucus Axis has declared that Paul Ryan is to blame for for Trump’s inevitable loss:
Donald Trump made headlines this week when he questioned whether Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wanted him to prevail over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Maybe not,” Trump told Good Morning America on Tuesday. “Because maybe he wants to run in four years… or maybe he doesn’t know how to win. I mean, who can really know?” Trump said.
The view that Ryan “doesn’t know how to win,” however, neglects the reality that both Ryan and Clinton share a progressive, globalist worldview, which is at odds with Trump’s “America first” approach. Indeed, both Clinton and Ryan have said that they see themselves as representatives not only for American citizens, but also for foreign nationals and foreign interests. This view that the needs of foreign citizens are equal to the needs of American citizens reflects the belief that Americans are only part of many interest groups that a lawmaker ought to consider when crafting legislation—even as he or she negotiates with other countries, which always put their citizens first.
What must it be like to write for Breitbart? I remember when I was 12 or 13 I would tune into Radio Moscow on my shortwave radio, amused at how crude and awkward were the Soviet Union’s attempts at propaganda to an English-speaking audience. Reading Breitbart brought back those memories.
Here’s another taste:
Both Clinton and Ryan view being American as an intellectual “idea” rather than a national identity, and both support the donor-class’s agenda of open borders, which—as Bernie Sanders has explained—essentially amounts to “doing away with the concept of a nation-state.”
The Clintons have long advocated for their desire to establish a “genuine global community” with “open borders” and “easy immigration.” Just last month, Clinton’s campaign went so far as to indicate that she believes the world has a global right to immigrate to the United States. Similarly, Ryan has a two-decade long history of pushing for open borders—even going so far as to stump for open borders policies alongside Luis Guterriez, who has previously said that his “only one loyalty” is to foreign migrants. Gutierrez, who is Congress’s most vocal proponent for open borders, both backed Ryan for House Speaker last year and has endorsed Clinton for president.
The open borders, internationalist worldview of Clinton and Ryan stands diametrically opposed to the “America first” agenda of Donald Trump, who has pledged that the needs of America and her citizens—not the desires of foreign interests—will be his priority.
The article goes on to say that Ryan “leads the pro-Islamic migration wing of the Republican party” because of Ryan’s criticism of Trump’s Muslim immigration ban proposal.
In addition to this, Trump fluffer Sean Hannity regularly throws barbs at Ryan, as well as everyone else in the conservative movement who has failed to show sufficient fealty to his Leader. Fox’s Lou Dobbs and others have joined the attack as well. Republican Congressmen Dana Rohrabacher, Jim Bridenstine and Mark Meadows — all of whom voted for Ryan for Speaker — now say they will not support him again because of his disloyalty to the party nominee.
According to The Hill, the Trump/Breitbart attack on Ryan is coming directly from Stephen Bannon, Chairman of Breitbart News and CEO of the Trump Campaign, who has given direct orders to his Breitbart staff to “destroy Ryan.”
This latest anti-Ryan story gives further insight into the Bannon-Trump worldview.
It accuses Ryan and Clinton of being essentially the same person, and of both wanting to destroy the very concept of America as a nation state. This argument neatly dovetails with the language Trump is using in his stump speeches and media interviews.
In an extraordinary situation, the GOP presidential nominee is now using his campaign megaphone to attack not only Clinton, but the highest-ranking elected official in his own party. He's ignored the counsel of GOP establishment figures and is advancing the view that a cabal of “globalist” elitists — which includes Ryan, Clinton and international bankers — are undermining American sovereignty by pushing for open borders in trade and immigration.
Ah, I see those pesky “international bankers” are up to their usual mischief. First they undermined the Weimar Republic, now they are attacking the US of A. Didn’t they learn their lesson?
So, while the election season is guaranteed to come to an end on November 8, the Republican finger pointing and knife fighting season will just be heating up.
Enjoy.
