Lyin' Paul Ryan appeared on Face the Nation on Sunday, prepared to falsely blame the Democrats for the government shut down caused by Trump, McConnell and himself. What he obviously was not prepared for was to answer questions:
JOHN DICKERSON: The President, you talk about blame for the Democrats and all that. But they're not the only players in this. In 2013, the President, Donald Trump as a civilian said, "It always happens to be the top. I mean, the problems start from the top and have to get solved at the top." The top he was talking about was the presidency. So why is this president who came in as a negotiator who said he was going to fix Washington, why is he not contributory to this problem that we have a government shutdown--
PAUL RYAN: Look, as Republicans we have some experience with futile gestures like government shutdown. You want to see some quotes? Let me give you one. "Open the government. When you open the government, we'll open negotiations." That was Dick Durbin in 2013.
JOHN DICKERSON: Right, but I'm talking about the president, not Dick Durbin--
PAUL RYAN: Exactly what they were saying in those days.
JOHN DICKERSON: The president came in saying, "Washington's broken. I'm going to fix it."
PAUL RYAN: And so--
JOHN DICKERSON: We're exactly where we were. This is why he ran. This is what everybody doesn't like.
PAUL RYAN: Donald Trump didn't shut down the government. Senate Democr-- why did they call this the Schumer Shutdown? Because Senate Democrats shut down the government so--
JOHN DICKERSON: (LAUGH) They as Republicans are calling it the Schumer Shutdown. I want to get-- ask all that. Here's the thing.
PAUL RYAN: No, but let me get you there. You can't blame Donald Trump for the Senate Democrats shutting down the government. They shut down the government with no end game in sight. I frankly don't think they felt we were going to pass our bill. And when we passed our bill, funding children's health insurance, keeping the troops funded, preventing the medical device tax from kicking in in a few days which worries everyone's healthcare costs, they would not pass that bill. That has nothing to do with President Trump.
JOHN DICKERSON: I'm not trying to assign blame. I'm trying to just figure out what's going on here. This is a very familiar play. We've been here before as you say--
PAUL RYAN: Exa-- and it's futile. It never works--
JOHN DICKERSON: But I want to know why a president who came-- just what's gone wrong? Why has he not been able to apply? He came in as the great negotiator. What is it that has made it impossible for a person who ran on fixing the system unable to get past it--
PAUL RYAN: It's a good question because we're so babbled. If we were saying, for instance, "We are never going to do a DACA solution. We're going to kick these kids out," then I might understand Democrats getting frustrated. But what's baffling about this, John, is we were in negotiations on how to solve this problem, and then they blew that up and stopped these negotiations. So we have Kevin McCarthy representing House Republicans who was negotiating with Dick Durbin and other leaders. That's what's baffling about this--
JOHN DICKERSON: Here's what they say. And you have two Republicans in the Senate who voted against this funding measure for roughly similar reasons which is the president's been a moving target. Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, said, "We're spinning our wheels until we know where the president is." So the Democrats felt like, or this is their case anyway, they felt like, "He's a moving target. Let's use this moment of leverage," as Republicans did with Obamacare in 2013. "We (?) care about this--"
PAUL RYAN: Which didn't work and didn't-- and I can-- look--
JOHN DICKERSON: Right, but it was something they cared. Democrats care about this, too. I guess the question is--
PAUL RYAN: The question is: Where is the president on this issue?
JOHN DICKERSON: And is he going to stay in one place?
PAUL RYAN: Yes, so I think what presidents should do is leave room for negotiation to get a solution. That's exactly what he's doing. He's basically saying in addition to a DACA solution, we have to have border security including funding for a wall. He wants to get rid of the Diversity Visa Program.
And we want to move from a system of immigration based on family relations to one based on skills and merits for what the economy needs. Perfectly common sense. Here's the issue. If we simply did DACA without incumbent reforms, then you'd have a DACA problem five years down the road. We want to fix the problem and the root cause of the problem.
DACA is a symptom of a broken immigration system. We want to fix the root cause of this problem while we deal with DACA so that we don't have 700,000 more DACA kids in five years. That's perfectly common sense, and that's all the president is saying.
Well, isn't that special?! After four months of refusing to fund CHIPS, it's all of a sudden a vital point for the Republicans? That is some mighty fine hypocrisy Ryan's got going on.
The whole use of DACA by Ryan also reveals something he's been trying to cover up, without much success. He's so willing to make a deal that he's now willing to save some innocent children - as long as they are good, red-blooded, white skinned American children. The other ones - those with darker pigments - well, not so much.
