Margaret Carlson, Columnist

Trump Just Won’t Tell Republicans He's One of Them

Meeting with the House speaker adds little clarity about the presumptive nominee's bedrock principles.

May 12, 2016 at 8:58 PM UTC

Margaret Carlson was a White House correspondent for Time, a weekly panelist on CNN’s “Capital Gang” and an editor at the New Republic.

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In the days leading up to Donald Trump's much-ballyhooed courtesy call to Capitol Hill on Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan seemed like a groom wanting his presumptive bride to change before he does. “This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp,” he said on CNN, letting it be known that the presumptive nominee still had a lot of explaining to do before he could get an endorsement from the top Republican elected official. “What a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have a standard bearer that bears our standards.”

Not even a glimmer of such clarity emerged on Thursday. The joint statement that followed the meeting was carefully worded to give the appearance of cordiality but also made clear that the standard bearer's standards remain a work in progress.