Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., plans to boycott the 2024 Republican National Convention if former President Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination.
Ryan told local news outlet WISN-TV that he would only attend the 2024 nominating convention if the party's voters nominate someone other than Trump.
"It depends on who the nominee is. I'll be here if it's someone not named Trump," he said. "I'm not interested in participating in that, no. Even in Wisconsin," where the event will be held.
Paul Ryan says he won’t show up at the RNC in Milwaukee next year if Trump is the GOP nominee
— Ben Siegel (@bensiegel) February 26, 2023
In 2016 in Cleveland, he chaired the convention and officially announced that Trump was the party’s nominee
pic.twitter.com/lkKNRWo5T0
Ryan also predicted that Trump would ultimately fail to capture the nomination in the 2024 primaries.
"The reason I don't think he'll be our nominee because we're going to lose with him," he said. "He cost us the House in '18, he lost the White House in '20, he cost us the Senate in '20, he cost us the Senate again in 2022, and he cost us probably a good dozen House seats in 2022. This is a lesson we don't need to repeat again."
Paul Ryan: "If we nominate Trump again we are going to lose...We lost with him in 18', 20' and 22'. We know this. He will cost us another election." pic.twitter.com/V2tT7rvWyu
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) February 24, 2023
Trump has repeatedly attacked Ryan, a frequent critic, accusing him of being a "RINO," or Republican in name only.
"Back in my day a 'RINO' was somebody who was more moderate versus conservative," Ryan told WISN. "I'm a conservative. Today, a RINO is how much fealty you pledge to Donald Trump. I'm very low on that."
“What RINO means today is it’s a pure fealty index to Donald Trump…We’ve gone from measuring people based on their philosophy or even their temperament to like a fealty index. That, to me, is very wrong and dangerous.” — Paul Ryan at a roundtable with @SykesCharlie pic.twitter.com/q2eSZCr67Q
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) February 27, 2023
The former president responded to Ryan's digs by lashing out at his former ally on Truth Social.
"Paul Ryan is a loser, Mitt Romney could have won without him," Trump wrote. "I won twice, did much better the second time, and was 233 Wins out of 253 Races in the Midterms. Paul Ryan is destroying Fox, and couldn't get elected dogcatcher in the Republican Party!"
Ryan, who served as House speaker from 2015 to 2019 and collaborated with Trump to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, has been staunchly opposed to Trump's reelection, arguing that Trump's shenanigans have blighted the integrity of the Republican Party and directly contributed to its electoral losses in recent years.
Shortly after Election Day in 2022, Ryan told WISN that "Trump's kind of a drag on our ticket.
"I think Donald Trump gives us problems, politically," he said at the time. "We lost the House, the Senate, and the White House in two years when Trump was on the ballot, or in office. I think we just have some Trump hangover. I think he's a drag on our office, on our races."
Ryan doubled down on his comments in an interview with the Washington Post last week, calling Trump a "proven loser."
"I think what happened in my party is people got intimidated by the politics. And Trump, who has chosen to engage in demagogic entitlement populism, has led a lot of people away from being responsible and from doing the right thing," said Ryan, a staunch fiscal conservative. "I think his unelectability is his Achilles' heel, and that in and of itself is going to be a unifying argument to move on from Trump," Ryan added.
The Biden White House, meanwhile, called out Ryan for backing plans to cut Medicare and Social Security.
"What do Donald Trump and Paul Ryan have in common? Both ran on Medicare cuts and tax giveaways for rich special interests, then they both lost to Joe Biden," White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the Post, adding that the proposals on the right threaten the "earned benefit programs that middle class Americans pay into throughout their entire working lives."
