In CNN town hall, Paul Ryan says Trump 'messed up' with Charlottesville comments

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

RACINE - In a town hall televised nationally on CNN, House Speaker Paul Ryan for the first time criticized President Donald Trump directly for his comments last week about the Charlottesville violence, saying Trump “messed up” and “needed to do better.”

“It was equivocating and that was wrong,” Ryan said of the president’s widely panned remarks suggesting equivalence between white supremacists and those protesting against them.

At the same time, Ryan sharply pushed back against the suggestion that Trump should be censured for his comments.

“It is very, very important that we not make this a partisan food fight. It is very important that we unify in condemning this kind of … hatred. To make this us against them, Republicans against Democrats, pro-Trump (vs.) anti-Trump, that is a big mistake for our country, and that will demean the value of this very important issue,” said Ryan in response to a question about censure from Rabbi Dena Feingold, sister of former Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, who grew up in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville. (Feingold's parents were friends with Ryan's parents).

Ryan praised Trump’s initial response to Charlottesville last Monday and his comments against bigotry earlier in the evening during the president’s speech on Afghanistan strategy.

But he said Trump’s comments at a news conference last Tuesday were “much more morally ambiguous and much more confusing. I do think he could have done better.”

Asked by moderator Jake Tapper if Trump has done enough now on the issue, Ryan said, “I don’t think any of us have done enough.”

Ryan said, “Every single one of us needs to unify and stand up against this repulsive, repugnant, vile bigotry.”

Ryan’s town hall lasted a little more than an hour and covered a host of issues.

The speaker said he welcomed the president's comments Monday night on Afghanistan, saying he was pleased with the president’s decision-making on the issue and “I think I heard a new Trump … doctrine,” referring to it as “principled realism.”

When Army Staff Sgt. Blake Buchanan, a man from Ryan’s district who served in Afghanistan, told Ryan he was disappointed Trump didn’t speak of an “end date,” Ryan said if adversaries “believe we have some end date, some timetable, then they will wait us out.”

On the GOP’s big ambitions to overhaul the tax code, Ryan predicted it will be “far easier” for Congress to pass tax reform than health care reform, partly because lawmakers will be following a different set of parliamentary rules.

When Sister Erica Jordan, a Dominican nun, asked him why most Republicans didn’t seem to be siding with the poor, Ryan told her he agreed with Catholic teaching about the need to alleviate poverty, but “the status quo isn’t working, sister.”

Ryan said, “I think the government has made a lot of mistakes, well-intentioned, ... but we’ve got to change our approach.”

Asked by an engineer in his district about the Foxconn deal and whether it sets a precedent for corporations demanding taxpayer dollars to create jobs, Ryan ardently defended the project, saying it would bring a new manufacturing sector to Wisconsin.

“Local governments compete with each other all the time for economic development,” Ryan said.

“We will be the industrial park for Silicon Valley,” he predicted.

Returning to the subject of Trump, one questioner asked Ryan about the president’s tweets, and what kind of example they set for children.

“I want this president to succeed ... because I want our country to succeed,” said Ryan. “Do I wish there would be little less tweeting? Of course I do. I don’t think it’s going to change. … At the end of the day what I control are my own actions.”

Ryan received a mixed reaction from the mostly respectful crowd of roughly 300, with supporters periodically applauding and opponents groaning about his comments.

There were some lighter moments, including during one commercial break when both Ryan and Tapper flashed the "W" sign for Wisconsin.

In a sign of how much Republicans have struggled since taking power this year, CNN's TV promo for the Ryan town hall featured this grim summation of the political moment: “A country divided. A party at odds. An agenda stalled.”

Before the event started, more than 100 protesters gathered outside the Racine Theatre Guild.

Many held signs that read "Where's Paul Ryan?" and criticized the Janesville Republican for not having town halls open to more members of the public. Sue Verhaeghe, a teacher from Mount Pleasant, held a long banner that read, "Trump is racist: Paul Ryan is his enabler."

"I want Paul Ryan to get a spine, basically," she said.

Ryan is one of many GOP lawmakers who distanced themselves last week from Trump’s handling of the violent protest.

Amid the furor over the president’s remarks on Charlottesville last Tuesday, Ryan wrote on Twitter: “We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”

But like many high-ranking officials in the party, he did not directly criticize the president, something Republicans in Congress have been loath to do this year because of Trump’s support from GOP voters and fears it will split the party and make it harder to work with the president to enact their agenda.

Ryan drew fire over the past week from Democrats and Trump critics within his own party for not calling Trump to task. In a sketch on NBC’s "Saturday Night Live," the speaker was pilloried by Tina Fey, who asked, “Where’s Paul Ryan in all this?"

“Who will be brave enough to say the emperor has no clothes?” House Democrat Gwen Moore of Milwaukee said in a radio interview last week.

“I think of someone like my good friend, Paul Ryan, who has never had any great respect for Donald Trump,” Moore said, calling on Ryan to confront the president.

In a Facebook post earlier Monday, Ryan wrote: “There are no sides. There is no other argument. We will not tolerate this hateful ideology in our society ... there is no moral relativism when it comes to neo-Nazis. We cannot allow the slightest ambiguity on such a fundamental question."

Among those outside the town hall was Randy Bryce, a Democrat challenging Ryan in the 2018 elections.

"He's been really soft. He won't call out Donald Trump for being complicit with this racism that's going on," Bryce said before the event. "It's rampant in our country now, and it's really a shame that he won't call him out by name. He won't call Donald Trump out."

Although he was clearly outnumbered, one pro-Ryan protester showed up with a sign that read, "Veterans for Paul Ryan."

"I think he's doing the best job that was handed to him," Jeff Frievalt of Racine said.

"Either side is going to be angry at him regardless of what he does," Frievalt said.