Paul Ryan becomes latest Republican to equate Trump to an ‘authoritarian’ leader

Former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan accused former President Donald Trump of being an “authoritarian narcissist,” making him the latest party member to equate the former president to a dictator.

“Trump’s not a conservative,” Ryan said at a virtual event hosted by consulting firm Teneo on Wednesday. “He’s a populist, authoritarian narcissist. So, historically speaking, all of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, make him feel good at any given moment.”

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“He thinks in an authoritarian way, and he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior,” Ryan continued.

He is the latest Republican to speak out harshly against the former president. Former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney has spent the last few weeks criticizing Trump and Republicans in Congress for the United States “sleepwalking into a dictatorship.”

Trump said during a town hall with Fox News’s Sean Hannity that he would not be a dictator “except for Day One,” which Democrats and anti-Trump allies have tried to capitalize on.

Ryan’s comments on Wednesday join a series of times where he spoke out against Trump, the front-runner in the 2024 Republican primary. The former House speaker has blamed both past Republican election losses on the former president.

Yet he has attributed his few rebukes of Trump while holding the speaker’s gavel to wanting to work with the former president in good faith as leader of the House. Under the Trump administration, Ryan served two years as speaker before leaving office.

“We needed to make it work,” the former speaker told the New York Times in March. “That was my strong conviction. Did I think he was going to improve and grow in the job? Yeah. He didn’t. It was after I left when he really went off the rails. He was getting rid of the people who were telling him what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear.”

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Ryan has also been openly critical of Republicans in Congress since he left the House. Following the historic ousting of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as speaker, Ryan called the GOP conference a “bifurcated coalition government,” referencing the growing divisions and ideological splits within the party.

While in office, Ryan was known for being a fiscal conservative hawk and less vocal on cultural issues than some of his GOP colleagues. Now, as cultural issues have moved to the forefront of the Republican agenda, Ryan continues to speak out against the GOP, focusing on “culture wars” and urging them to focus on spending and rising debt.