Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has claimed that Donald Trump was “very apologetic” for promoting a television segment on FOX News in which host Jeanine Pirro called on Ryan to resign.
Following the failure of Ryan’s Obamacare replacement bill, Trump asked his Twitter following to watch Judge Jeanine’s FOX News show Justice with Judge Jeanine, on which she delivered a blistering attack of Ryan and his failure to pass a successful bill.
Pirro said in her opening monologue:
Paul Ryan needs to step down as speaker of the house. The reason? He failed to deliver the votes on his healthcare bill, the one trumpeted to repeal and replace Obamacare, the one that he had seven years to work on, the one he had under lock and key in the basement of Congress, the one that had to be pulled to prevent the embarrassment of not having enough votes to pass.
However, Ryan told CBS This Morning on Thursday that Trump had apologized for the tweet, telling him he thought that Pirro would instead attack the media’s obsession with linking his presidential campaign to Russia.
“He actually was very apologetic,” Ryan said. “He said, ‘I had no idea she was going to talk about that. I thought she was going to talk about something else.’”
Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer denied any suggestion that Trump intended to embarrass Ryan by promoting the show, claiming that he did so as a “fan of the show, plain and simple.”