Former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan believes that nominating Donald Trump as the party's 2024 presidential nominee would be the wrong decision.
Ryan said Tuesday that the next GOP presidential nominee has to make strides with a certain integral demographic of the electorate: suburban voters.
"That new swing voter in American politics is the suburban voter, and it's really clear the suburban voter doesn't like Trump, but they like Republicans," Ryan said during an interview with Fox Business host Stuart Varney on his show Varney & Co. "So I think anybody not named Trump I think is so much more likely to win the White House for us."
"We'll want to win the White House so badly and beat the Democrats, and we know we're so much more likely to lose with Trump because of the fact that he is not popular with suburban voters that we'll want to win," Ryan added.
Trump has not yet declared his intentions regarding the next presidential election cycle.
Ryan, who has since worked in the private sector and is a guest lecturer of political science and economics at the University of Notre Dame, didn't deny his history of being at odds with Trump.
"Everybody knows our feelings toward each other," Ryan said, alluding to him and Trump. "We won't nominate Trump because we want to win."
He compared the present state of the GOP to what Democrats have done in past presidential election cycles.
The Democratic Party shifted from focusing on John Kerry and Howard Dean in 2004 to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in 2016, Ryan said, and then seemingly further left with Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in 2020 before President Joe Biden was ultimately elected as more of a moderate candidate.
When asked by Varney if he is "a DeSantis guy" in reference to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—who is in the midst of his own reelection campaign—Ryan replied that the GOP has a "great stable of candidates."
Aside from DeSantis, Ryan specifically mentioned former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, and even former Vice President Mike Pence.
"Why would we want to risk giving the nomination to someone that we know—my party hasn't lost this much this fast than we have with Trump," Ryan said. "We lost the House, the Senate and the White House in a span of two years. I don't want to repeat that, and I want to win."
In another interview Tuesday with Yahoo! Finance, Ryan reiterated his dislike of Trump as the nominee, saying, "We are worse off with Trump as our nominee than with somebody else."
There is no love lost between Ryan and Trump.
Last year, Trump called Ryan a "RINO"—a "Republican in name only"—and blamed him for the GOP's 2012 presidential election shortcomings.
The former president's comments were made in response to Ryan expressing his antipathy for another Trump presidential run.
"Paul Ryan has been a curse to the Republican Party," the former president said. "He has no clue as to what needs to be done for our Country, was a weak and ineffective leader, and spends all of his time fighting Republicans as opposed to Democrats who are destroying our Country."
In June of this year, Ryan prodded at his own party's members who "didn't have the guts" to impeach Trump. It again prompted Trump to verbally retaliate, once more referring to Ryan as a "RINO" in addition to "a pathetic loser."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek reporter based in Michigan. His focus is reporting on Ukraine and Russia, along with social ... Read more
