- Paul Ryan said the GOP would “probably lose” if Trump becomes the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.
- Ryan said Trump was the biggest factor as to why Republicans did not win as many states as they predicted.
- Ryan said the GOP could win the presidential election if the nominee were a “Reagan 2.0 conservative.”
Former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan on Sunday said the GOP would “probably lose” if former President Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential election.
“He can get his people through the primaries, but they can’t win general elections,” Ryan told Johnathan Karl, co-host of ABC’s This Week. “We get past Trump, we start winning elections. We stick with Trump, we keep losing elections. That’s just how I see it.”
Trump announced earlier this month his 2024 White House bid as he faces federal and state criminal investigations.
Although Ryan told Karl he was proud of some of the accomplishments during the Trump administration, he still referred to himself as a “Never-Again-Trumper,” days after the former president announced that he was running for the 2024 presidential election.
“But I am a Never-Again-Trumper. Why? Because I want to win, and we lose with Trump. It was really clear to us in ’18, in ’20 and now in 2022,” Ryan said.
Ryan said Trump was an important element as to why Republicans did not win as many states as they predicted they would during the midterm election.
“The biggest factor was the Trump factor … I think we would have won places like Arizona, places like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire had we had a typical, traditional conservative Republican, not a Trump Republican” Ryan said.
“I think he’s going to continue to lose altitude because we want to win. And we know with him we lose. We have a string of losses to prove that point,” Ryan said. “And there are a lot of really good, capable conservatives who people I think like that are more than capable of not only being good conservatives in office but can win elections.”
Ryan continued by saying that the GOP would stand a better chance at winning the White House election if the nominee is not Trump but rather a more traditional Republican he refers to as a “Reagan 2.0 conservative.”
“I really believe a Reagan 2.0 conservative is something that the country will want, I think that our voters will want,” Ryan told Karl. “I think that our voters will want someone that is a good, verifiable conservative, problem solver, but also a unifier and somebody who’s not so polarizing.”
