How did the much anticipated meeting between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan go this morning? Well, Andy Borowitz isn’t too far off the mark, although he runs a parody site at The New Yorker:
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what is being hailed as a productive closed-door meeting between two leaders of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump promised House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday that he would try to sound slightly less like the former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
Speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol after the meeting, the presumptive G.O.P. nominee said that Ryan had expressed concern that so many of the billionaire’s public utterances were reminiscent of the Third Reich.
“Paul basically said, ‘Can you help me out here? Can you not sound like Hitler all the time?’” Trump said. “And I was like, ‘Paul, I can absolutely do that for you.’”
As an example, Trump said, “Instead of saying I am going to round up people based on their religion, I’ll say that’s just a suggestion. Just like that, I’m fifty per cent less Hitlerish.”
Laughing aside, Paul Ryan didn’t change his mind about not endorsing Trump despite having taken prior abuse from more than a handful of his own caucus members. Indeed, the most they could muster was a joint statement that said they “remain confident there’s a great opportunity to unify our party and win this fall, and we are totally committed to working together to achieve that goal.”
It’s a bit ambiguous isn’t it?
Are they “totally committed” to winning in the fall, or are they only “totally committed” to continuing to work on an “opportunity to unify the party”?
I’m betting on the latter:
Mr. Ryan and other senior House Republicans said Thursday’s meetings were the start of a process of getting to know Mr. Trump. Lawmakers said they were unlikely to generate an immediate rapprochement with the controversial Mr. Trump.
“It’s like a first date,” Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.) said outside the meetings, which were swarmed by anti-Trump protesters.
Most first dates are, as Trump likes to say, “total disasters.”
Perhaps this one wasn’t quite that bad.
