Carol Faraci

It’s been an interesting start of the week for the National GOP’s immigration task force, which just released a report on the immigration bill that was passed this summer. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) had no comment for this story. But we should probably give him the benefit of the doubt. This whole scene is so far out there that we have even gotten a prominent conservative-leaning editorial writer to editorialize, noting that there is little doubt that the immigration bill was unconstitutional. It would be nice if Ryan would join in the chorus, but it seems pretty likely that it will take a crisis at some point for him to want to appear in the public eye like a bit player. Republican leadership has been abysmally slow to engage with the media on immigration, while conservatives outside the beltway have been giving the media coverage what they are willing to give.

Yesterday, we reported on Speaker Ryan’s dismal performance in the interview, and President Trump was the designated target on this front. Tonight, after Speaker Ryan sat down with liberal stalwarts like MSNBC’s Ali Velshi at dinner, the media noticed that he was trying for an awkward smile while he was getting grilled on whether this bill might fall under a constitutional provision that allows for a congressional inquiry into a bill. The WSJ stated that Ryan “was more circumspect on whether he is the party in charge of legislation” on immigration, but he did say that there “is a very bipartisan process, and we are doing what there always has been. When I came here, we certainly couldn’t have discussed this in terms of Republicans and Democrats, in terms of Republicans and Democrats, working together, when these different elements from both sides contribute to one body.” That would imply that Ryan knows there is more than the GOP base talking about this, but he’s not too worried about having his position caught up in the media circus: “A question was how to convey to a broader public that there’s a bipartisan process that we care about and want to get done, that there’s work going on between Republicans and Democrats, but because we know what the House Freedom Caucus wants, we should be able to turn to the Freedom Caucus and say, ‘Can we come together on this?