- Former House Speaker Paul Ryan thinks his new job as a board member of Fox Corporation will finally allow him to “do something” about President Donald Trump, according to a new report in Vanity Fair.
- “Paul is embarrassed about Trump, and now he has the power to do something about it,” a Fox executive told Vanity Fair.
- Ryan has been openly critical of Trump since leaving Congress. In several on-the-record interviews for the Politico correspondent Tim Alberta’s book, “American Carnage,” Ryan didn’t mince words about Trump, saying he wanted to “scold” Trump “all the time.”
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Former Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was the speaker of the House for the first two years of the Trump administration, but he believes it is his new job as a board member of Fox Corporation that will finally allow him to “do something” about President Donald Trump, according to a new report in Vanity Fair.
Ryan, who joined the Fox Corporation board in March, is now said to be one of the most important voices pushing Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch to transition Fox News and pivot away from Trump, according to Vanity Fair.
“Paul is embarrassed about Trump and now he has the power to do something about it,” a Fox executive told Vanity Fair. Fox Corporation did not immediately respond to a phone call or emailed request for comment on the Vanity Fair piece.
Ryan often gave in to Trump’s demands as House speaker, even as he was said to privately disapprove of Trump’s bombastic, tweet-first-and-think-later governing style.
Ryan has been openly critical of Trump ever since leaving Congress. In several on-the-record interviews for the Politico correspondent Tim Alberta's book, "American Carnage," Ryan didn't mince words about Trump.
"I told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy to help him get his mind right," Ryan told Alberta. "Because, I'm telling you, he didn't know anything about government ... I wanted to scold him all the time."
In one instance recounted in the book, Trump was displeased that a 2018 spending package didn't include funding for his desired border wall. He signed it only on the condition that Ryan allow him some time to generate suspense for the bill on Twitter.
Ryan said: "We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was. Now I think he's making some of these knee-jerk reactions."
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House would be launching a formal impeachment inquiry over an explosive whistleblower complaint from the intelligence community that accused Trump of pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation that would hurt one of Trump's political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden. The now-declassified complaint was made public Thursday.
"For the past several months, we have been investigating in the committees and litigating in the courts whether Congress can exercise its full Article I power, including the constitutional power of approval of articles of impeachment," Pelosi said at a news conference.
Pelosi decried Trump's actions as having "revealed the dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections" in getting behind a formal impeachment inquiry.
On Fox News the coverage of the complaint has varied. Shep Smith has gained attention as one of the few Fox News hosts to publicly push back on Trump and the GOP. Smith's defense of the Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano's comments on the whistleblower complaint led to on-air ire from the Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson.