So much for leadership from Paul Ryan

House Speaker Paul Ryan says popular vote loser Donald Trump "messed up" by calling white supremacists "very fine people," but he's ready to move on to the stuff that matters, like tax cuts. He's not going to be supporting a move to censure Trump for cozying up to Nazis, because he has other stuff to do.

Ryan made the comments during a town hall Monday night organized by CNN in his Wisconsin congressional district, after being asked whether he would back the resolution that comes following Trump’s comments about the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The question came from Rabbi Dena Feingold, the sister of former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who grew up in the same city as Ryan. Ryan said censuring Trump would be “counterproductive.” “If we descend this issue into some partisan hack-fest, into some bickering against each other and demean it down into some political food fight, what good does that do to unify this country?” Ryan said, adding that it would be the “worst thing we could do.”

Because having the U.S. Congress explicitly and officially condemn murderous racism would just be a "partisan hack-fest." Sure. But I guess Ryan does know all about being a partisan hack. Ryan did, however, finally move a little bit beyond his regular bland expression of concern about Trump's comments, saying "I do believe that he messed up in his comments on Tuesday when it sounded like a moral equivocation or at the very least moral ambiguity when we need extreme moral clarity."

But no worries, Trump fixed all that in the speech on Afghanistan he gave just before Ryan's town hall, says Ryan. The heavily scripted speech Trump read off of his teleprompter, with no ad-libs, "cleared that up. I think it was important that he did that tonight." That'll last all of 24 hours, if that. Trump's appearance in Phoenix Tuesday is practically designed bring on another Trumpian debacle of racism.