Paul Ryan is still Donald Trump’s buffoon

| 2:42 am EDT June 22, 2017
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Speaker of the House Paul Ryan walks into a bar. The bartender says “Speaker Ryan, how can you walk without a spine?” It’s tempting to make jokes about it, and in fact Paul Ryan is a joke – but the role that he’s still playing for Russian puppet Donald Trump is very much of a concern. It’s become more disconcerting in the past few days.

Even though plenty of Republicans in Congress are still willing to work with the toxically unpopular Donald Trump on certain types of legislation, even they’re not crazy enough to put their names on anything that involves Trump cozying up to Russia. It’s why the Senate passed a bill this week to increase punitive sanctions against Russia, and to limit Trump’s ability to ease those sanctions, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 98-to-2. It’s why that bill is set to pass the House in similar veto proof fashion. But enter Paul Ryan.

Ryan is apparently using his role as Speaker of the House to single handedly delay the vote on the Russian sanctions bill, even though his own party seems eager to put it into law. After all, the Republicans want to be seen as standing against Donald Trump when it comes to Russia. And yet according to the New York Times (link) Ryan is holding up the vote so the Trump administration can try to lobby House Republicans to water it down.

This probably won’t work. The Russian sanctions bill will likely end up becoming law in its current form, over Donald Trump’s loudest of objections. But Paul Ryan, either because he’s as complicit in the Russia scandal as has long been rumored, or because he’s simply a spineless coward who’s afraid to say no to a bully, is playing the role of Trump’s buffoon more egregiously than ever.