GOP/PAUL RYAN/SPYGATE/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Paul Ryan has spent much of the past year and a half biting his tongue as Donald Trump totally upended his party. Now, the outgoing House speaker is contradicting the president on the issue he obsesses over most: the Russia investigation. The Wisconsin Republican gingerly undercut a core Trump talking point during a news conference Wednesday, arguing that he had seen ‘no evidence’ to back Trump’s assertion that the FBI wrongfully planted a spy in his campaign. Ryan also panned Trump’s argument that he has the power to pardon himself…Ryan’s pushback, delicate as it was, is risky. When House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) first dismissed Trump’s ‘spygate’ theory last week, Trump allies pummeled him for days. Ryan’s comments, and his subsequent defense of Gowdy, are already igniting the ire of the president’s most ardent defenders. And it comes amid a simmering debate among House Republicans over whether the retiring speaker should remain in the job through the election, as he insists, or whether the conference should move on and select a permanent leader.”
-Rachael Bade, “Ryan undercuts Trump on Russia at fraught moment,” Politico, June 6, 2018 6:52 pm