Here's What Paul Ryan Reportedly Did After Donald Trump Won The 2016 Election

According to an explosive new book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, titled "Peril," former House Speaker Paul Ryan began to research how to interact with people with narcissistic personality disorder after Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016. Per The Hill, Ryan was surprised by Trump's win, but of course, needing to work with him — particularly with the Republicans controlling both the House and Senate at the time — he looked into how to work with someone "amoral and transactional."

Ryan was one of a handful of Republicans to publicly disagree with Trump during his presidential run and subsequent time in office — while Trump has given plenty back, too. After Trump defended the white supremacists who organized the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in 2017, Ryan took to Twitter to write that "White supremacy is repulsive ... This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity." The then-president didn't take too kindly to Ryan's words, and according to Woodward and Costa, Trump called Ryan to yell at him: "You're not in the foxhole with me!" (via The Hill).

Also in the book, the authors claim that a Republican donor — a doctor — told Paul Ryan that he needed to "understand what narcissistic personality disorder is," while giving him his "thoughts on how to best deal with a person with anti-social personality disorder" in an email — linking him to more information about the condition too. According to Woodward and Costa, Ryan was left convinced that Trump was a narcissist (via The Hill). 

Last month, Ryan once again spoke out against Donald Trump, rejecting his claim that last year's election was "stolen" (via The Independent). While he agreed that there may have been fraud, he was of the view that it wouldn't have been on a sufficiently large scale to have influenced the election away from Joe Biden to Trump. When Ryan stepped back from politics in 2019, he said it was to spend more time with his family, but there were rumors that it was down to his disagreements with Trump.