WASHINGTON ― House Speaker Paul Ryan’s expectations for Donald Trump are so low that, even when he disagrees with a Trump policy proposal, he’s just glad Trump has one.
In an interview that aired on Sunday, CBS’s John Dickerson asked the Wisconsin Republican about Trump’s plan to offer new mothers six weeks of paid maternity leave. As Dickerson noted, Ryan has called such proposals an “unfunded mandate.” But now, with Trump focusing much of his ranting campaign on things that cannot be described as policy, Ryan is just happy the GOP presidential nominee is talking about ideas.
“What I’m excited about is he’s jumping into the policy realm, offering ideas and solutions,” Ryan said. “That’s the kind of debate we want to have. We want to not only just acknowledge that we have problems in this country that need fixing, but we want to get on to debating solutions themselves.”
Ryan didn’t say whether he now thinks mothers should get paid maternity leave, but he did suggest that Trump was trying to address “an issue we all want to get at.”
“I welcome the fact he’s offering concrete policy solutions to fix problems that we need to address in this country,” he said. “That’s a great step in the right direction.”
Dickerson then asked Ryan if it was still the right direction if those ideas were ones he disagreed with.
“Sure, no problem,” he replied.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.