The White House on Tuesday declined to weigh in on whether Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) should step down from his leadership position before his actual retirement takes effect at the end of this term.
“At this point, that’s something for Speaker Ryan and members of Congress to make that determination, not something that the White House has waded into at this point,” Sanders told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday.
Yet the White House’s own budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has reportedly weighed in on that question.
The Weekly Standard reported Monday that Mulvaney wondered aloud at a conference sponsored by the magazine the previous day: “Wouldn’t it be great to force a Democrat running in a tight race to have to put up or shut up about voting for Nancy Pelosi eight weeks before an election? That’s a really, really good vote for us to force if we can figure out how to do it.”
Pelosi has said she’ll run for the speakership should Democrats win control of the House in November.
A spokesperson for Mulvaney told the Washington Post his comments were “purely hypothetical.”
