The major media has rendered its verdict: Paul Ryan’s career is one big fat failure.
Their reasoning? The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives was insufficiently hostile to the Republican White House.
That’s the clear takeaway from the media coverage of Ryan’s announcement this week that he would not seek re-election this fall.
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell offered the most forceful appraisal, declaring him the worst speaker of the House in American history — all for not standing up more aggressively to Trump.
"So Paul Ryan will take his seat as simply the worst of this country’s Speakers of the House of Representatives," O'Donnell said. "He has earned that place in history through unrelenting cowardice as the Speaker of the House — an office that is constitutionally capable of containing and controlling an out of control president. But Paul Ryan surrendered all of his powers to the presidency."
O'Donnell said that as speaker of the House, Ryan's record is worse than former slave owners and convicted sex offender Denny Hastert.
CNN's Ana Navarro echoed O'Donnell: "He started his career as a Jack Kemp Republican and he’s ending it defined by Donald Trump, by what people see as enabling Donald Trump, not having stood up to him, not having confronted him, not having defended the principles and convictions that Paul Ryan embraced and represented at the beginning of his career. And that’s why I felt relieved" he's leaving.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace said Ryan working with Trump "strained and robbined him of every last drop of credibility."
"He was never a skilled speaker,” said MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid. “When it came to Donald Trump, he behaved with nothing — I can’t describe it with any other word other than cowardice. He wanted his tax cuts for the rich, for corporations, that he was willing to let Donald Trump do anything, and he forgot he’s fourth in line to the presidency. He runs a coequal branch of government. … He seemed like Donald Trump’s kid brother who didn’t know how to stand up to him in a fight."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough spent much of this week attacking Ryan for not condemning every ostensibly untoward thing Trump said during his first year in office.
“And I think to historians,” Scarborough summarized, “you know, Edmund Burke, what did Edmund Burke say … all that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. And too often, Paul Ryan did not answer the call of history.”
A number of media commentators – Nicolle Wallace, Joy Behar, Kasie Hunt, to name three – went so far as to say Paul Ryan “made a deal with the devil” in agreeing to work with the White House on some topics of common interest.
For more, check out the above montage.