House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday he will support any Republican nominee for president — including billionaire Donald Trump.

The Wisconsin Republican said on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that he wants House Republicans to help the nominee build consensus for an agenda that can be translated into legislation once the new president takes office. He said the 1980 election is a model.

“I’m going to work with whoever the nominee is,” he said. “And I’ve made that very clear to everybody … We want to add some substance to this conversation, and we want to earn from the public a mandate. Look, this is what I really wish we had done in 2012.”

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Ryan sounded downright populist in explaining why Trump continues to lap the Republican field more than six months after entering the race.

“He is giving voice to the real and sincere anxiety that is out there,” he said. “People are very, very panicked that the country that they knew and loved is leaving them. That the opportunity is not in front of them but it’s behind them; the best days are behind and not in front of them. And that the political system, the people who’ve been in charge, have failed them.”

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Ryan, who has been an ardent proponent of free trade and liberalized immigration, said Wednesday that he views securing the border as more than just an immigration issue. With terrorists trying to cross the southern border, he said, it is a national security issue. He said there “should be no daylight between us” on the issue.

Ryan said economic stagnation has caused angst. He acknowledged high-profile cases of foreign guest workers replacing American employees. That is the exact scenario that happened to information technology workers at Walt Disney World. They had to train their replacements as a condition of their severance payments.

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But Ryan blamed the tax code, not immigration law, for such problems. “Let’s clean up our tax laws so that Disney doesn’t make moves like that,” he said.

Ryan declined “take the bait” on whether he would prefer Sen. Marco Rubio or another candidate to win the nomination. He noted that he is the chairman of the Republican National Convention and cannot take sides in the primary fight.

“I’m actually Switzerland on this,” he said.