House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday urged Republicans to vote for their party’s candidates — including the GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump — in what could be his final pitch before Election Day.
“Republicans need to come home,” Ryan said during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “Republicans need to vote.”
Ryan confirmed this week that he cast an early vote for Trump in Wisconsin, warning that a Hillary Clinton presidency would bring a torrent of scandals and investigations.
But Ryan’s recent expressions of support for the real estate mogul mark something of a change.
It was only three weeks ago when Ryan informed his GOP colleagues that he would no longer defend the party’s presidential nominee after a video emerged in which Trump could be heard making lewd and sexually aggressive comments about women.
A spokeswoman for Ryan said at the time that he would instead spend the rest of the campaign “focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities.” The declaration outraged Trump, who publicly castigated Ryan for undermining the party’s efforts.
Ryan more recently has been pushing for a “unified Republican government” while calling on GOP voters to support the party’s entire ticket. In his interview with Hewitt, Ryan blamed the media for playing up the differences among Republicans, saying the party’s leaders are “all on the same page.”
“This is an agenda that we are all unified around, which is what we are trying to offer the country,” Ryan said.
A central part of that agenda, Ryan said, will be to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the struggling health care law better known as Obamacare.
Ryan told Hewitt that Republicans in Congress once again passed repeal legislation earlier this year, which was promptly vetoed by President Barack Obama.
“Imagine if we had a Republican president,” he said.
