Watch out, House Speaker Paul Ryan. That’s the message from Sarah Palin.
The former vice presidential candidate, Alaska governor, reality TV star, and pundit is vowing to use her celebrity to help defeat Ryan in his Congressional reelection bid. In an interview that aired Sunday with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Palin said she would support Ryan’s Republican primary opponent in the Wisconsin race.
“I think Paul Ryan is soon to be ‘Cantored,’ as in Eric Cantor,” Palin said. Cantor, the former GOP House majority leader, lost the Republican primary to a more conservative opponent in 2014. Ryan’s “political career is over but for a miracle because he has so disrespected the will of the people,” Palin told Tapper.
Palin, who endorsed Donald Trump early on, was responding to the fact that Ryan recently declared that he was “not ready” to support Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Already, several prominent GOP leaders, including 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have said they will not attend the GOP convention and have publicly declared Trump unfit for the presidency.
Palin claimed that Ryan’s announcement was motivated by his own White House ambitions. “If the GOP were to win now, that wouldn’t bode well for his chances in 2020, and that’s what he’s shooting for,” Palin said.