Trump's tweet on Jeanine Pirro had nothing to do with Paul Ryan, says speaker's office

WASHINGTON -- The president tweeted a plug on Saturday for Fox host Jeanine Pirro. 

“Watch @JudgeJeanine,” he posted.

When viewers tuned in to see “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Fox News that night, the first thing they saw was host Pirro’s call for House Speaker Paul Ryan’s resignation.  

“My opening statement: Paul Ryan needs to step down as speaker of the House. This is not on President Trump,” Pirro said, alluding to the failure of the Republican health care bill Friday. “No one expected a businessman to completely understand the nuances, the complicated ins and outs of Washington and its legislative process,” Pirro said. 

Ryan’s office said Sunday there’s nothing to read into Mr. Trump’s tweet. “[T]he president was clear his tweet had nothing to do with the speaker,” Ryan press secretary AshLee Strong told CBS News’ Catherine Reynolds in an email. “The speaker and president talked for an hour yesterday about moving forward on the agenda and their relationship is stronger than ever right now.”

“I think it was more coincidental,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus suggested on “Fox News Sunday.” “Oh, come on,” was host Chris Wallace’s rejoinder. So, he followed up, why tell people to watch her? “Because he loves Judge Jeanine and he wanted to do Judge Jeanine a favor.” But no, Priebus went on, he doesn’t want Ryan to step down. The president “thinks that Paul Ryan is a great speaker of the House.

Publicly, the president has only praised Ryan for his work on the bill. On Sunday morning, he tweeted his blame at the conservative GOP group, the Freedom Caucus, that played a key role in torpedoing the measure.

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