Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich criticized current House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) for his lack of endorsement of likely presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump earlier in the day in an interview with CNN.
Gingrich told host Sean Hannity it was a “big mistake” and that it sets the wrong tone for the rest of the Republican Party.
“[I]n the case of Paul Ryan he made a big mistake today and he needs to understand this,” Gingrich said. “He is the Speaker of the House. He has an obligation to unify the party. He has an obligation to reach out. Obviously he and Donald Trump are going to have disagreements. Some of them will work out and some of them they won’t. That’s fine. Our constitution provides that speakers and presidents can fight, but I think he sends the wrong signal and a signal which I think endangers the House Republicans and endangers the Senate Republicans.”
“I much prefer what Mitch McConnell did, what John McCain did –they both said, ‘OK game’s over, we have a nominee. I’m for him,'” he continued. “And I think Paul Ryan has some obligation institutionally to be responsive to the fact that the people of the party he belongs to have chosen a nominee. And frankly in the long history of American politics, Donald Trump is not outrageously outside the norm. This kind of vitriol you get does not reflect accurately people who have been nominated for president over the last 200 years.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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