Trump once asked Paul Ryan why he couldn’t be ‘loyal’: book

President Trump in 2017 asked then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) why he wasn’t more “loyal” to him, according to a new book.

After Ryan criticized Trump’s response to a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Trump chided Ryan over the phone, The Washington Post reported Monday, citing an advance copy of Cliff Sims’s upcoming book “Team of Vipers.” Sims was formerly a White House communications staffer.

{mosads}“Paul, do you know why Democrats have been kicking your ass for decades? Because they know a little word called ‘loyalty,’ ” Trump told Ryan, according to the book.

“Why do you think [then-Minority Leader] Nancy [Pelosi (D-Calif.)] has held on this long? Have you seen her? She’s a disaster,” Trump reportedly continued. “Every time she opens her mouth another Republican gets elected. But they stick with her . . . Why can’t you be loyal to your president, Paul?”

Ryan said in 2017 that Trump “could have done better” in responding to the Charlottesville rally in which a counterprotester died after a self-professed neo-Nazi drove a car into a crowd. Following the rally, Trump blamed violence “on many sides.”

Trump also criticized Ryan for denouncing Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign after the surfacing of the “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump could be heard bragging about sexually assaulting women, according to the book. 

“I remember being in Wisconsin and your own people were booing you,” Trump reportedly told Ryan. “You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog! And what’d I do? I saved your ass.”

The book also describes a meeting between Trump and Ryan where Trump allegedly acted uninterested when Ryan tried to explain to him the “ins and outs” of a GOP health care bill, according to the Post.

Trump sipped on a Diet Coke, looked out the window and “stared aimlessly” while Ryan explained the bill, the Post reported according to its copy of the book. Trump eventually allegedly walked out of the Oval Office and to his private dining room, where he began watching television. He was reportedly retrieved by Vice President Pence, who convinced Trump to return to the Oval Office.

“Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House” hits shelves next week.