Donald Trump certainly didn’t keep his disdain a big, well-kept secret when it came to the handful of Republicans who dared to vote in favor of his second impeachment, this one for his role in inciting and refusing to help stop the deadly violence that took place at the US Capitol in his name on January 6th, 2021.
But according to former Trump-era House Speaker Paul Ryan, there were a hell of a lot more House Republicans who wanted to vote in favor of having the disgraced now-former president impeached over the infamous Capitol insurrection, they just didn’t have the “guts” to do so.
Business Insider reports that former House Speaker Ryan made the revelation during remarks he made at a small reception at a hotel in Florence, South Carolina, during a campaign event for Rep. Tom Rice, who was one of the just 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in 2021.
The Myrtle Beach Sun News reports that Ryan told the small group, “There were a lot of people who wanted to vote like Tom but who just didn’t have the guts to do it. There are a lot of people who say they’re going to vote their conscious, they’re going to vote for the Constitution, they’re going to vote for their convictions but when it gets hard to do that they don’t do it.”
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“Tom Rice is a man of conviction,” the former Republican Speaker of the House went on to add. “Tom Rice is the kind of person you want in Congress.”
Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, served as House Speaker from 2015 until his retirement in 2019, leaving the position during Trump’s term in office, and has served as a staunch critic of the one-term, twice-impeached former guy as well as other MAGA-Conservatives who seek to exact “vengeance” against any member of the party who dares to divert from Trump’s demands.
“This is just such a crystal clear case where you have a hard-working, effective, senior member of Congress who deserves reelection vs. people who are just trying to be celebrities who may be trying to help Trump with his vengeance,” Ryan went on to say, according to the Sun-News. “That’s not who voters want, voters want people focused on their solutions, not on Trump’s vengeance and that to me is a really clear-cut case here.”
Over the weekend, during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Ryan also accused countless Republicans of casting aside their policy-making jobs to instead become entertainers on social media.
Read the full report from Business Insider here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
