by Philip Hodges and Jeff Dunetz

In an interview with CBS News anchor Scott Pelley, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan declared that he’s patched up with the President-elect and they talk pretty much every day.

Paul Ryan had all but aligned himself with the Never Trump crowd, calling out Trump on multiple occasions for what was interpreted as racist remarks and his lewd comments demeaning women. Ryan even held off endorsing Trump for nearly a month after Trump clinched the GOP nomination, later saying, “Look, I believe that he’s certain better than Hillary Clinton. These are the choices that we have.”

After Trump’s election victory that people saw a completely different side to Paul Ryan. When was critisizing Trump, Ryan was concerned about his own political relationships and what he thought was the best thing for the party. After the election, Ryan knew gridlock between a GOP congress and a president of the same party would be unacceptable to the American people, and that Donald Trump was his best chance of finally pushing through the budget reform he’d been working on for years. So he realized how important it was for the speaker to work with the new president.

Here’s an excerpt from Ryan’s interview with CBS News anchor Scott Pelley:

Scott Pelley:  You called Donald Trump a racist.

Paul Ryan:  No, I didn’t. I said his comment was.

Scott Pelley: Well, I’m not sure there’s a great deal of daylight between those two definitions. But he definitely called you ineffective and disloyal. Have you patched it up?

Paul Ryan: Yeah, we have. We’re fine. We’re not looking back. We’re looking forward. We– we actually– we’ve had– we– like I said, we speak about every day. And it’s not about looking for– back in the past. That’s behind us. We’re way beyond that.

Scott Pelley:  Did you believe he could be nominated? Really?

Paul Ryan: Yeah, no, I didn’t see this one coming. He knows that.  Donald Trump’s a very– he was a very unconventional candidate. He’s going to be an unconventional president. What I like about it, in my, like I said, almost daily conversations, is he’s just a get-things-done kinda guy.

Scott Pelley:  Have you told him being president is not being CEO of the United States, that the Congress is going to have a say?

Paul Ryan: Oh, we’ve talked about that extensively. We’ve talked about– the Constitution, Article I on the Constitution, the separation of powers. He feels very strongly, actually, that– that, under President Obama’s watch, he stripped a lot of power away from the Constitution, away from the Legislative Branch of government. And we want to reset the balance of power, so that people and the Constitution are rightfully restored.

 

Parts of this post were originally seen at Eagle Rising