Paul Ryan Says He Won’t Attend RNC in ’24 If Trump Is GOP WH Nominee

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Paul Ryan says he won’t attend the RNC in 2024 if Donald Trump is the party’s presidential nominee. Ryan told WISN-TV that the convention being held in his home state did not affect his decision. The former speaker revealed Trump’s poor standing with suburban voters in pushing the new nominee. Loading Something is loading.

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Former House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a recent interview that he would not attend the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee if former President Donald Trump won the party’s nomination.

Ryan, who represented a congressional district anchored in southeastern Wisconsin from 1999 to 2019 and served as speaker from 2015 to 2019, worked with Trump to pass the Republican-authored Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 .

But since leaving office, Ryan has strongly opposed Trump’s request to return to the Oval Office, becoming convinced that the former president cannot win the presidency for the Republican Party in a general election.

Speaking to WISN-TV, a Milwaukee-area ABC affiliate, Ryan said he would attend the convention if the GOP chose a new candidate to be the party’s standard bearer.

“It depends on who is nominated. I’ll be here if it’s someone not named Trump,” the former lawmaker said.

When Ryan was asked if he would cancel a convention with Trump as the nominee, even if the event were held in his home state, he remained steadfast in his position.

“I’m not interested in joining that, no. Not even in Wisconsin,” he said.

In the 2022 book, “Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission,” written by journalist Mark Leibovich, Ryan revealed that he was “very comfortable” with the decisions he made about Trump while he is still in place.

The former speaker dismissed critics who wanted him to be more vocal in rebuking Trump’s behavior, something that most Republican lawmakers typically avoided during the then-president’s tenure.

Ryan asked if some people would rather he go after Trump every time the then-president makes a controversial comment.

“I think there are people who want me to start a civil war in our party and get nowhere,” Ryan told Leibovich.

In an October 2022 interview on Fox Business Network, Ryan reiterated his opposition to a third Trump White House campaign.

“I think anybody not named Trump, I think is more likely to win the White House for us. We know we’re more likely to lose with Trump because of the fact that he’s not popular with out-of-town voters that’s why we I want to win,” he said then.

Ryan amplified his message last week, calling Trump a “proven loser” during an interview with The Washington Post.

“I think in some areas we will just keep recording losses until we learn the lesson,” the former spokesman told the newspaper. “I hope that for the presidency, we learn the lesson in time for 2024.”

While Trump narrowly won Wisconsin against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Joe Biden put the state back in the Democratic column in 2020.

However, Biden won Wisconsin by only about 20,000 votes out of nearly 3.3 million ballots cast, and the swing state is expected to once again be one of the most hotly contested electoral prizes next year.

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