Former House Speaker Paul Ryan says he believes any 2024 Republican presidential candidate could beat incumbent president Joe Biden provided they are not named Donald Trump, but that it will be “a disaster if we nominate Trump”.
Mr Ryan, a Trump adversary and member of the board of Fox News’s parent company, made the remarks in an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday morning.
The former speaker was asked about comments made by former Republican representative Liz Cheney on Tuesday at a conference in which she warned Democrats that they are “playing with fire” if they assume they can beat the former president in the 2024 general election — should he win the GOP primary.
He said that Ms Cheney is right that Mr Trump “could win,” but Mr Ryan added: “I think we lose with him.”
“I think we’re much more likely to lose — we haven’t won anything with him since he first won in ’16,” Mr Ryan said of the former president. “We lost the House in ’18, the presidency in ’20, the Senate in ’20, and we could have won the Senate in 2022 but for him.”
Host Joe Kernen joked that Mr Ryan might be told who to endorse by Rupert Murdoch due to his position at Fox News but the former speaker reiterated: “I’m for anybody not named Trump.”
He added: “Because I think we beat Biden for sure if we nominate a Republican not named Trump.”
Mr Ryan acknowledged that the Trump base does not like him as a “Never Trumper” but argued that voters will see that any of the other candidates do not carry the baggage that the former president does and the party can win with one of them.
On Tuesday, current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Squawk Box that he was not sure Mr Trump was the strongest candidate the Republican Party has in the primaries.
He later had to walk back those remarks in an interview with Breitbart, call the former president to apologise, and sent out a fundraising email saying that Mr Trump was stronger than ever.
