Paul Ryan says he won’t vote for Trump: ‘I’m gonna write in a Republican’

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that he does not plan to vote for former President Trump in November, suggesting he would write in another candidate instead.

“Character is too important to me,” Ryan, who left Congress in 2019, told Yahoo Finance at the Milken Global Institute Conference. “And it’s a job that requires the kind of character that he just doesn’t have.”

“Having said that, I really disagree with [President Biden] on policy,” he added. “I wrote in a Republican the last time, I’m gonna write in a Republican this time.”

Ryan, the head of the Republican House majority during Trump’s first two years in the White House, has became a vocal critic of the former president. He has argued that Trump is not a “conservative” but rather an “authoritarian narcissist,” and backed former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for standing up to the former president.

“Historically speaking, all of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good in any given moment,” Ryan said in an interview late last year.

“He doesn’t think in classical liberal conservative terms,” he continued at the time. “He thinks in an authoritarian way, and he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior.”

The former Speaker has also stated it is “really clear” that Biden won the 2020 election, despite the former president and his allies’ common claims to the contrary. 

“It was not rigged. It was not stolen,” Ryan said in an interview in 2021. “Donald Trump lost the election. Joe Biden won the election. It’s really clear.”

Ryan left Congress after serving 20 years representing Wisconsin’s 1st District. He was also Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) running mate in the 2012 presidential election.

Romney, who announced in September that he will retire from the Senate at the end of his term, has also recently emerged as a strong critic of the former president.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.