House Speaker Paul Ryan, Wisconsin’s most prominent Republican elected official, says he’s not ready to support Donald Trump, his party’s newly minted presumptive nominee for president.
“To be perfectly candid … I’m just not ready to do that at this point. I’m not there right now,” Ryan said Thursday during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I hope to, though, and I want to. But I think that what is required is that we unify this party. And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee.”
“We hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln and Reaganesque,” Ryan added.
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Trump all but clinched the GOP nomination earlier this week after a large win among Indiana’s primary voters led his remaining rivals to exit the race.
In a written statement Thursday evening, Trump responded in kind, saying he’s, “not ready to support Speaker Ryan’s agenda.”
“Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first,” the statement continued.
Ryan, a Janesville resident and former vice-presidential nominee, has criticized Trump already this election cycle over some of the real estate mogul’s more inflammatory statements, including calls to stop Muslims from entering the United States.
Earlier this spring, Ryan’s name was widely thrown about by establishment Republicans as a possible last-minute nominee who could emerge from a contested Republican Nation Convention to head the GOP ticket in November. Ryan has consistently said he’s not interested in the 2016 nomination.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Donald Trump.
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