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8/20/17, "Gohmert: During the Campaign, Paul Ryan Told Us to 'Keep President Hillary Clinton Accountable'," Courtney O'Brien
"Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) has revealed that during the 2016 presidential campaign, House Speaker Paul Ryan told him and his fellow Republicans to give up on Donald Trump's campaign and just focus their energy on keeping "President Hillary Clinton accountable." According to Ryan, the Republicans had no chance at the White House, so at the very least they should try to retain their House majority.
The directive came during a conference call, Gohmert told The Daily Caller in a video interview and then confirmed again during his appearance on "Fox and Friends" Sunday.
The Texas Republican, as you can imagine, was not thrilled with Ryan's suggestion.
“Are you crazy? We haven’t held anyone accountable. You haven’t even let us hold the IRS commissioner accountable [for using government power to harm President Obama’s political adversaries],”an astonished Gohmert said to the speaker on a call.Speaker Ryan has not been conservatives' favorite leader as of late. By late May last year, he had still not properly endorsed Trump, though by then it was clear he was going to be the Republican presidential candidate. Ryan was just "not ready" to offer his support, he told CNN's Jake Tapper.
Gohmert has also spoken out against Ryan in regards to the now failed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. During the House Freedom Caucus's discussions with the White House, the Texan claims that the conservative group was nearly ready to strike a deal with the president, but Ryan and then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus advised Trump not to."
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Added: Republicans didn't expect Trump to win:
7/6/17, "GOP Senator Explains Party’s Disarray: Nobody Expected Trump to Win," New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer, Ed Kilgore
"Sen. Patrick J. Toomey offered a simple, remarkable explanation this week for why Republicans have struggled so mightily to find a way to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“Look, I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win, I think most of my colleagues didn’t, so we didn’t expect to be in this situation,” the Pennsylvania Republican said Wednesday night during a meeting with voters hosted by four ABC affiliates across his state.
According to the Washington Post’s Paul Kane, this is almost certainly why congressional Republicans agreed upon a “repeal and delay” strategy for dealing with Obamacare soon after the election:
"They had no real clue how to do anything else. But the lack of advance planning has also been evident in the inability of Republicans in the Executive and Legislative branches to reach any kind of agreement on how to proceed with other very basic agenda items — also achievable without Democratic votes — like “tax reform” and the federal budget."...
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