Photo : Alex Edelman ( Getty Images )

There is a saying in the streets for when someone talks trash about a person they were scared to fight after that adversary isn’t around to harm them.


It’s called “pump-faking.”

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) is 1993 New York Knicks’ Charles Smith in the closing seconds.

According to Tim Alberta’s new book, American Carnage, Ryan now has a lot to say about the current president and claims that he saw his retirement from Congress as an “escape hatch.”


“I told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy to help him get his mind right,” Ryan said, according to excerpts obtained by the Washington Post ahead of the book’s release next week.

“Because I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government ... I wanted to scold him all the time.”

Bitch, no you didn’t. Ryan is so full of shit that if he laid down on the ground outside of his house, some caring neighbor would scoop him up and put him in a plastic bag and place him in the trash.

Here’s how The Root’s Politics Editor Jason Johnson described Ryan’s retirement at the time:

No, Paul Ryan is retiring because, just like the 26 Republicans before him who have announced retirements this year, he realizes the truth: Save for a few tax cuts and a few regulations, they sold their souls to President Donald Trump, and Trump devoured those souls, pooped them out, wrapped them in a special “I Love Putin” edition of the Moscow Times and set them on fire right on the front stoop of the Republican National Committee. Now Ryan thinks he can step over that steaming hot pile and pretend that he has no idea how it got there. Whether or not he wants to take responsibility, the Republican Party is about to get posterized in almost every single election across the nation this fall—and he doesn’t want to be there to see it.


Ryan’s now on a reinvention tour in which he’s trying to reframe his position from front-runner for a window seat in the clown car being driven by Trump to Trump detractor.

Alberta claims that it was Ryan that convinced the president to sign a 2018 spending bill that didn’t include money for his dumb-ass wall by giving him time to create some hype on Twitter.


From the Hill:

... Alberta reports that Ryan broke into “maniacal, punch-drunk laughter” after then-chief of staff Reince Priebus called him early one day to ask about a Trump tweet accusing the Obama administration of tapping his phone during the election. “Paul, what the hell is going on? What the hell is he talking about?” Priebus reportedly asked the former Speaker.


Basically, the way Ryan tells it, the world could have been in much worse shape had it not been for Ryan and those around the president, whom Ryan claims “helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time.”

“We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was. Now I think he’s making some of these knee-jerk reactions,” the former congressman says, the Hill reports.


A spokesperson for Ryan told the Hill that the author’s words aren’t Ryan’s word and that the former representative retired to spend time with his family.

“He’s been very clear that he retired because he wanted to spend more time being a father and a husband,” the spokesperson said.


Yeah, sure, his high school age kids want to hang out with dad. In fact, they are probably pissed that he’s home all day.