Fox News Host Says Paul Ryan Should Resign from His Position

Source: Mark Wilson / Getty

On Saturday morning, Donald Trump tweeted out a directive for his followers to “Watch @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews tonight at 9:00 P.M.” Trump loves Fox News, so his recommendation was weird by presidential standards but not unusual for him. However, what went down on Pirro’s show makes Trump’s tweet look shady. The former prosecutor opened her show with a bold statement: “Paul Ryan needs to step down as speaker of the house.”

From there, Pirro ripped Ryan to pieces for the disastrous Trumpcare vote failure, which prompted a straight-up celebration, since the much maligned bill could have left up to 26 million people without healthcare over the next decade. The fact that the GOP Congress and Trump experienced such a colossal failure right out of the gate does not bode well, and while Trump has officially blamed Democrats, he may have chosen Pirro to do his dirty work.

Or did he? Pirro’s show aired nearly twelve hours after Trump tweeted, so arguably, there was enough time for her to completely retool an episode. However, there’s still the distinct possibility that Trump used Fox News to undermine a political adversary. Pirro played into this possibility while completely freeing Trump up from responsibility. She characterized the president as an unaware businessman, whereas — as Pirro frames it — Ryan held all of the cards. Pirro slammed Ryan for not taking all Congressional personalities into account and doing what needed to be done to pass the bill:

“Paul Ryan needs to step down … He failed to deliver the votes on his health care bill … The one that he had seven years to work on … The one that had to be pulled to prevent the embarrassment of not having enough votes to pass … I want to be clear. This is not on President Trump. No one expected a business man to completely understand the nuances, the complicated ins and outs of Washington and its legislative process.”