In a bizarre episode, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., told the Reno Gazette-Journal that Speaker Paul Ryan was going to step down in the next thirty to sixty days. The Nevada Republican said that Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. would be his replacement.
Oddly, the story was quickly refuted by the Speaker’s office. A spokesperson for the Speaker emphatically denied the claim, without shedding any light on why Rep. Amodei would have said such a thing.
That either means that the Speaker was, in fact, planning to do so at some point, and Rep. Amodei let the cat out of the bag at the wrong moment, or that Rep. Amodei was telling tales out of school, and didn’t know what he was talking about. There’s no conclusive information to back up either story.
Speaker Ryan has not declared whether or not he would run again in 2018, and given that there are so many retirements from Congress, may well not. Whether or not Paul Ryan stays in House leadership, Mark Amodei probably just solidified his position as a back-bencher, because the Speaker can’t be happy with his public speculation.
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