House Speaker [crscore]Paul Ryan[/crscore] said Monday that he wants to get to know Donald Trump and that a third-party conservative run would be a “disaster” for the GOP.
Ryan announced last week that he is not ready to support Trump as the Republican nominee, the two are scheduled to meet Thursday.
“I just want to get to know the guy… we just don’t know each other,” Ryan said to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
He added, “I never said never. I just said (not) at this point. I wish I had more time to get to know him before this happened. We just didn’t.”
Trump was asked on Sunday whether he would ask Ryan to step down as the co-chairman of the convention if the Speaker refused to support him. “I will give you a very solid answer, if that happens, about one minute after that happens. Okay? But there’s no reason to give it right now,” he replied.
When asked Monday about Trump’s comments, Ryan said, “He’s the nominee. I’ll do whatever he wants with respect to the convention.”
Ryan seems keen on unifying the Republican Party before the convention. He told the Journal-Sentinel, “We have right now a disunified Republican Party. We shouldn’t sweep it under the rug without addressing it. That would be to our detriment in the fall.”
He even went on to praise the presumptive GOP nominee, “Let me say this, the man deserves a ton of credit for an amazing achievement, which is to bring millions of people into this party and to have a very impressive victory… At the same time we want to make sure we don’t pretend we’re unified and then go into the fall at half strength.”
Conservatives upset with the nomination of Trump have been publicly floating the idea of a third party challenger, but Ryan knocked down this proposal. (RELATED: Inside The Conservative Effort To Woo A Third Party Challenger)
He said it would be “a disaster for our party. I have communicated that to plenty of people.”