Analysis | Paul Ryan’s latest explanation for Trump’s tweets might be the worst of all wapo.st/2OP8uZx?tid=ss…
2/ In this excerpt from Ryan's statement, as published in this WAPO piece, Ryan makes the point, exactly. I don't like agreeing with him, but, we have to remember this: "And here's the coup de grace, where the two of them talk about Trump's summit with Russian
3/"President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki: “I thought it was a really bad press conference,” Ryan said. He said again that Trump just loves to troll “you guys.” I asked him if he derived any enjoyment from watching “you guys” being so expertly trolled. Not really, Ryan said.
4/"“I don’t think like that, and I don’t act like that,” he said. Trump “just wants to see your heads explode, and he just wants you to spend the next 12 hours talking about this.” This struck me as Ryan’s best attempt to explain Trumpism, if not one of those “Where we are as a
5/"country” moments that seem to occur every day now, or every minute on Twitter. But it’s still useful to lay down a marker sometimes. We have, in this case, a Republican speaker of the House explaining away a president’s intentions as nothing more than an effort to get a rise
6/"out of people. I asked Ryan who the “you guys” being trolled were. “The country,” he said, chuckling. “The people who don’t like him,” he clarified. “The non-Trumpers.” I asked Ryan if he was one of the “you guys.” “Sometimes,” he said, “yeah.” Leibovich got at this a little
7/"bit, but it's worth emphasizing just what Ryan is saying here: He's arguing that the president of the United States is saying, doing and speculating about things he doesn't believe to elicit a reaction."
~Aaron Blake, WAPO, 8/7/18
~Aaron Blake, WAPO, 8/7/18
