Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” fill-in host Jason Chaffetz asked Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) for his evaluation of his colleague House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) as leader of the House of Representatives.

Gowdy offered a glowing assessment by saying there was no one “better qualified” to fill that role than Ryan and described the Wisconsin Republican as smart, principled, inclusive and reluctant.

“Jason, there are a lot of good members of Congress and my co-guest tonight is one of my favorites,” Gowdy said. “But I bet you [Rep.] Johnny [Ratcliffe (R-TX)] when I say there is no one better qualified to be Speaker of the House than Paul Ryan. He has every quality that you want in a leader. He is smart. He is principled. He is inclusive. And most importantly, he is reluctant. He did not want to be the Speaker of the House. He wanted to be the chairperson of the Ways and Means [Committee].”

“But when Kevin McCarthy dropped out of the speaker’s race, we had no one to turn to,” Gowdy continued. “So we went and said, ‘Will you lead us?’ And he reluctantly did so. He is the smartest kid in the class. He would be my number one draft choice if I were starting this government all over again. I don’t know how long he wants to remain as speaker, but he’s done us a favor by taking the job, and I can’t think of anybody that could do the job as well as he’s doing it right now.”

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