It would be a stretch to say that Paul Ryan was a beacon of moral clarity during the presidential campaign, but the Republican House speaker’s standards have actually regressed considerably since then.

Early last year, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke expressed his support for then-candidate Donald Trump, who, pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper, lied. “I don’t know anything about David Duke, okay?” Trump said. “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.”

Ryan’s response scanned as a threat to banish Trump from the GOP: “When I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and as a country, I will speak up, so today I want to be very clear about something: If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people’s prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln.”

Like a typical party officer, Ryan maintained that he would support the eventual Republican nominee throughout the primary, and was thus reluctant to utter Trump’s name in any critical contexts. But the fact that he was willing to name his party, and to suggest Trump’s behavior was incompatible with membership in it, made a lot of people wonder if Ryan and other Republican leaders might intervene to stop Trump if his alliance with racists didn’t end.

Instead, Trump went on to win the GOP presidential nomination, with Ryan’s near-total acquiescence. Before the convention, Ryan called Trump’s criticism of “Mexican” judge Gonzalo Curiel “the textbook definition of a racist comment,” but added that the party should nominate Trump and rally around him to defeat Hillary Clinton anyhow. Now that Trump is president, and continues to coddle the scum of the nation, Ryan has withdrawn the party-membership warning from his condemnation of white supremacy altogether. His response to the murderous mob in Charlottesville, and his implicit critique of Trump’s response, read as if they were delivered from a fugue state.