Speaker Paul Ryan broke a self-imposed silence on the race for his party’s presidential candidacy to condemn the Republican front-runner’s call saying it was ‘not what this party stands for and more importantly it’s not what this country stands for’.

Ryan spoke hours after a defiant Trump doubled down in a series of morning television show interviews, saying the country was ‘at war’ and could not afford another 9/11.

The Republican presidential hopeful phoned three morning television shows to defend his call – and claimed he was making ‘making us look strong’.

He said that his plan to indefinitely ban Muslims from entering the country is necessary to prevent another 9/11 style attack and rejected comparisons to Hitler.

‘We are now at war,’ he said on Good Morning America. ‘We have a president that doesn’t want to say that, but we are now at war.’

And he said his proposal was little different than Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s executive orders after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that put restrictions on migrants from enemy countries, mainly Japan. Thousands of Japanese-Americans spent the war in internment camps.

But Ryan – who as House Speaker third in line to the presidency and therefore his party’s most senior elected official – rebuked Trump this morning saying he was not being true to the ‘country’s principles’;

The Republican said many Muslims serve the country in the military and work in Congress ‘the vast, vast, vast majority of whom are peaceful, who believe in pluralism, freedom, democracy, individual rights’.

Asked if he will support Trump if he were to become the nominee, Ryan said he will support whomever the Republicans nominate for the presidency.

Ryan, the GOP’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, dismissed a question about whether Trump’s comments might cause lasting damage for the GOP.

‘I’m not concerned about lasting damage to the party. I’m concerned about standing up for our country’s principles,’ Ryan said.

‘These are first principles, and our party is dedicated to these first principles. And that’s why I think it’s incumbent upon leaders of our party like myself to stand up and defend what conservatism is and what the Republican Party stands for.’

He used a closed-door meeting with the Republican Congressional caucus to tell them to steer clear of backing Trump’s call – another rare move indicating the depth of unease in the party establishment.

Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican congressman, told the Associated Press that Ryan told Republicans ‘not to go down that road’.

‘That’s not who we are as a country or who we are as a party — that religious liberty is a fundamental American right and that we should never compromise on that front and that’s an inappropriate policy to pursue. He was very direct and very strong.’

Matt Salmon of Arizona told reporters that Ryan told the weekly closed-door meeting of the House GOP that Trump’s proposal would violate at least two constitutional amendments.

And White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest spent the better part of his briefing with reporters on Tuesday addressing Trump’s comments.

The president’s spokesman said not only is it ‘offensive’, it ‘disqualifies him’ from serving as president.

Earnest said Trump’s comments disqualify the entire GOP field, which has taken an oath to support whoever the Republican nominee is, if they do not back away from that pledge.

The White House has made a point of refraining from commenting on many of the 2016 candidates’ charges, even when they invoke the president. But Earnest lit into Trump repeatedly today, calling his rhetoric ‘toxic’ and mocking his appearance.

‘The Trump campaign for months now has had a dustbin-of-history-like quality to it, from the vacuous sloganeering, to the outright lies, to even the fake hair, the whole carnival barker routine that we’ve seen for some time now,’ he said.

‘The question now is about the rest of the Republican party and whether they’re going to be dragged into the dustbin of history with him.

‘Now I know that each of the Republican candidates has already taken an oath pledging to support Donald Trump for president of the United States if he wins the nomination, but the fact is the first thing a president does when he or she takes the oath of office is to swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States and the fact is, what Donald Trump said yesterday, disqualifies him from serving as president.’

But Trump offered no concession in a string of television appearances this morning in which he compared himself to FDR.

‘This is a president highly respected by all, he did the same thing,’ Trump told GMA’s George Stephanopoulos. ‘If you look at what he was doing, it was far worse.’

Source Dailymail………

This page has been viewed 365 times