Paul Ryan Throws in with Leftists to Attack President Trump’s Pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio

House Speaker Paul Ryan has thrown in with leftists to rip President Donald J. Trump for pardoning Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

“The speaker does not agree with the decision,” Ryan spokesman Doug Andres told the Wall Street Journal. “Law-enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States. We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon.”

Ryan’s move to throw in against the president’s decision comes along with several Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi among them, leveling similar criticisms.

“Joe Arpaio ignored the courts of law in order to systematically target Latinos in AZ,” Schumer said in a statement, per Politico. “The definition of racism and bigotry.”

Pelosi bashed the president on Twitter.

.@POTUS pardon of fellow birther Arpaio makes mockery of rule of law, & says communities of color can be targeted & abused w/ total impunity

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) August 26, 2017

This comes after Ryan similarly threw in with leftists to criticize President Trump’s response to Charlottesville, running to leftist media outlet CNN to say in a town hall that the president “messed up” during his press conference at Trump Tower in New York City earlier this month when he bashed the media and violent leftists as well as neo-Nazis and the KKK.

Ryan’s decision to continue undermining the president in key moments of his presidency matches his behavior during the campaign. Ryan is not someone who has ever been supportive of the president. He actually, as Breitbart News reported earlier this year, encouraged fellow Republicans to abandon the president’s campaign against failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton in October of last year in the home stretch.

“I am not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future,” Ryan said in a conference call with House Republicans, audio of which was published by Breitbart News this spring.

Ryan has a brutal to-do-list in September, with government funding bills, debt ceiling legislation, Obamacare repeal rejuvenation, and the beginning of tax reform coming up. It remains to be seen if he can prove he has the legislative chops necessary for governing. But for now he seems more focused on virtue-signaling to the left and the media that he does not stand with the president and will follow through on his October 2016 promise to not defend Trump “not now, not in the future.”