Breitbart News fired a salvo at Republican Paul Ryan, posting an audio recording of the House speaker distancing himself from then-presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The audio was posted Monday night, as Ryan and Trump work to promote the GOP heath-care bill. The substance of the Oct. 10 recording received wide coverage at the time.

"I am not going to defend Donald Trump — not now, not in the future," Ryan said in the audio obtained by the right-wing website that has negatively covered the new health-care plan. At the time of the recording, Ryan said he would not campaign with Trump.



The comments came on a conference call with House Republicans, following the leak of a 2005 tape in which Trump bragged about touching women without their consent. The audio's release now, though, comes at a challenging time for Ryan, as he tries to persuade skeptical pockets of his party to support his plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

In its report on the recording, Breitbart said: "Now, on top of all of this, this new audio file raises questions as to how loyal Ryan is to Trump politically — and is asking the new president to use precious political capital to push through legislation that seems arithmetically destined for congressional failure. That could doom or at least dampen other key elements of the Trump agenda, like tax reform, immigration reform, national security efforts, budgetary reforms, building up of the U.S. military, trade renegotiation and more."

A spokesperson for Ryan told Breitbart that the audio is nothing new, saying, "The world is well aware of this history. ... And obviously a lot has happened since then. As everyone knows."