Former President Donald Trump has had more than eight years to digest the situation in national politics. At this point, he recognizes his swampy adversaries by the flavor and knows how to deal with them.
On Wednesday morning on Truth Social, Trump called out former Republican vice presidential candidate, former Speaker of the House and current Fox News board member Paul Ryan as a “weak and ineffective RINO” and a “total lightweight.”
“Nobody can ever trust Fox News, and I am one of them, with the weak and ineffective RINO, Paul Ryan, on its Board of Directors,” he said.
Then, the former president highlighted Ryan’s milquetoast performance as speaker of the House from 2015 to 2019 as well as the congressman’s appearance on the uninspiring 2012 Republican ticket as presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate.
“He’s a total lightweight, a failed and pathetic Speaker of the House, and a very disloyal person. Romney was bad, but Paul Ryan made him look worse. As a team, they never had a chance,” Trump said.
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Finally, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee called on Fox Corp.’s powerful Murdoch family — Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the executive chairman and CEO — to cashier Ryan and help make Fox News great again.
“Rupert and Lachlan, get that dog off your Board – You don’t need him. ALL YOU NEED IS TRUMP. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote.
Americans have grown so accustomed to the establishment media’s lies about Trump that some readers might even have assumed that the former president on Wednesday launched an unprovoked attack on Ryan. After all, those Trump “mean tweets” always came out of thin air, right? No one the former president mentioned in those tweets ever lied about him, right?
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In any case, the Truth Social post did not come out of thin air.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ryan appeared on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse with Francine Lacqua.”
At one point during the interview, Lacqua asked Ryan about the Republican Party’s future and his own.
First, the former speaker hilariously described himself as an “anti-establishment Republican.”
Then, he denigrated Trump as the torchbearer of “a populism without any anchor to principles.”
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Leftists like to talk about “dog whistles.” As a general rule, of course, the things leftists say are best ignored. But in this case, they might have a point, for that second comment from Ryan amounted to the loudest dog whistle one could imagine from a member — yes — of the Republican establishment.
Here is what the comment really meant: In Ryan’s mind, the tens of millions of voters who chose Trump over all other options in the 2024 Republican primary race acted on something other than principles.
What then, Mr. Ryan? Do you think those voters stand for nothing — no “anchor to principles” — while they blindly follow a leader? Do they lack intelligence? What about moral sense?
After listening to that kind of language for more than eight years, one can recognize the elitist assumptions behind them.
And how many of Ryan’s fellow establishment Republicans believe the same? Judging by their general inactivity amid President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ ongoing tyrannical persecution of Trump and his supporters, one senses that a good many of them do.
Furthermore, populism itself presupposes the most important political principle of all. Namely, the sovereign people rule in a constitutional republic.
Does Ryan disagree? If so, good luck winning back the base.
Hence Trump’s reference to Ryan as a “Republican in name only.” That has come to mean “establishment Republican” — someone who feigns allegiance to GOP voters but in fact serves the uniparty.
Furthermore, the former president seldom receives the credit he deserves as a wise and subtle tactician.
Trump — loudly and publicly — gave Fox News a choice between him and his MAGA movement on one hand and Ryan-style establishment Republicans on the other. But he did it in a way that spared the network his full and permanent wrath.
No one can trust Fox News, he declared, as long as Ryan remains on its board of directors.
In other words, the fault lies with the former speaker, not the network. But jettison Ryan — and with him the moribund GOP establishment — and Fox News will thrive again.
Perhaps it is naive to hope that the Murdochs would heed Trump’s advice.
They should know, however, that Wednesday’s post probably represented the closest thing to an olive branch they might ever receive from the most important Republican since Ronald Reagan.
