In a remarkable 45 seconds captured on video by CNN, Ryan, who is currently the highest-ranking elected official in the Republican Party first called Trump’s comments obviously racist and then immediately urged Americans to vote for him anyway.

House Speaker Paul Ryan refused to withdraw his endorsement of Donald Trump on Tuesday even as he acknowledged that Trump made “racist” and “indefensible” comments about the Mexican heritage of Gonzalo Curiel , the federal judge overseeing a suit against the defunct Trump University .

Speaking at the launch of an anti-poverty initiative in Washington, Ryan was asked if he had had any regrets about endorsing Trump in light of the candidate’s subsequent attempts to smear the judge based on his ethnicity. In his reply, Ryan denounced Trump’s words as though they could be separated from the man who made them, and argued that voters should still elect him president, since he would be more willing than Hillary Clinton to let a Republican Congress enact its policies.

“I disavow these comments. I regret those comments that he made. Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment,” Ryan said. Without pausing to draw breath, he then continued: “But do I believe that Hillary Clinton is the answer? No, I do not. … I believe that we have more common ground on the policy issues of the day, and we have more likelihood of getting our policies enacted, with him than with her. But I do absolutely disavow those comments.”

Pressed by reporters later to explain how he could continue to support a candidate who relies on such racist rhetoric, Ryan later seemed to speak of Trump’s mouth and heart as two separate entities, saying:

I don’t know what’s in his heart, but I think the comment itself is defined that way. So I am not going to defend these kinds of comments, ’cause they’re indefensible. I am going to defend our ideas, I’m going to defend our majority. And I think our likelihood of getting these ideas into law [is] far more likely if we are unified as a party.

As BuzzFeed reported, Ryan told Fox News Radio later that he was not ready to call Trump a racist — just because he made a clearly racist remark about the judge (and then repeated it, again and again). “No, I’m not. I’m saying the comment was. I don’t know what’s in his heart,” Ryan said. “I’m not saying what’s in his heart because I don’t know what’s in his heart and I don’t think he feels that in his heart,” he added.