WASHINGTON — Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan struck a conciliatory tone after meeting in Washington on Thursday, seeking to ease tensions that flared last week when Ryan said he is not ready to endorse the business mogul in his bid for the White House.
“While we were honest about our few differences, we recognize that there are also many important areas of common ground,” Trump and Ryan, R-Wis., said in a joint statement shortly after their meeting at the Republican National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill. “We will be having additional discussions, but remain confident there’s a great opportunity to unify our party and win this fall, and we are totally committed to working together to achieve that goal.”
Despite the positive tone of the statement, Ryan is still not committing to supporting Trump as the party’s nominee, although he said he was “encouraged” by their conversation.
“It’s no secret that Donald Trump and I have had our differences. We talked about those differences today,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill later in the morning. “The question is what is it that we need to do to unify the Republican Party and all strains of conservative wings of the party. It was important that we discussed our differences that we have, but it was also important that we discuss the core principles that tie us together.”
Ryan said the next step is to drill down on policy differences to find commonalities, adding that their “policy teams” were going to meet to “work through the details.”
“Going forward, we’re going to go a little deeper in the policy weeds to make sure we have a better understanding of one another,” he said.
Ryan called unifying the party “a process” and said it would “take some time” before it comes together.
“I don’t want us to have a fake unification process here,” he said. “I want to make sure that we really and truly understand each other.”
Trump’s face-to-face with Ryan was the first of several high-profile sit-downs with Republican leaders that come as the campaign seeks to unite the party — and its resources — ahead of a competitive general election. The speaker described the meeting with the former reality TV star, whom he admitted he doesn’t know very well, as a “pleasant exchange.”
“He’s a very warm and genuine person,” Ryan said. “We really don’t know each other and we started to get to know each other.”
The summit between Ryan and Trump was cast as an opportunity to soothe tensions between Trump and the GOP establishment at a pivotal moment for a party sharply divided over the likely nominee’s unorthodox and controversial campaign.
The day of meetings began when Trump met with Ryan and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, after which he met with the full House GOP leadership team.
Priebus tweeted out that the meeting was “great.”
He declined to say whether Ryan, a close ally, would soon endorse Trump.
Priebus sought to portray Trump as representing the values of the Republican Party, despite concerns over his positions on government spending and immigration.
“He’s in line with the platform,” Priebus told MSNBC. “There’s never 100 percent unanimity in anything. Like Reagan said, ‘My 80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy.’ We believe that.”
Trump met later with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his top associates.
In a roughly 75-minute meeting with Senate Republican leadership, Trump listened as the senators took their turns raising issues of concern that had come up in his raucous campaign.
According to more than a half-dozen participants, the meeting was cordial and lacked any of the tension from the previous huddle with Ryan’s team as none of those senators had expressed the same reservations as the House speaker.
Tensions within the party over Trump have only worsened in the week since he effectively clinched the nomination following the departures of rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney, members of the Bush family and other top Republicans have declined to endorse Trump publicly. Romney, who ran in 2012 with Ryan as his running mate, blasted Trump on Wednesday for suggesting he would not release his tax returns until after the election.
The real estate mogul will need party resources behind his White House run if he hopes to run a competitive bid against likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
The Trump campaign is finalizing plans with the RNC to set up a joint fundraising committee — a “victory fund” — to solicit donations far larger in magnitude than what the campaign itself is legally allowed to accept. The additional funds are routed to the party’s war chest then used to finance national get-out-the-vote operations.
The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson, Karoun Demirjian, Paul Kane, Kelsey Snell and Sean Sullivan contributed to this story.
