Ask him. Well, that was weird. He sounds more like Trey Gowdy.
Aaaaaaah. I get it. They're retiring. They don't have to go along with whatever lunatic shit comes out of Trump's pie hole when they don't feel like it. This is actually associated with a prominent line of political science research on how we assess sincerity for legislators' policy positions. Do legislators adopt policy positions that are insincere for electoral purposes? You can tell by whether or not they act differently when they decide to retire, but still have time to serve, so to speak. If they move in the ideological space after they decide to retire, they were posturing before because what they do after they are no longer constrained by reelection must be their sincere position. This line of research was started by John Lott, and picked up by a bunch of others, many of whom co-authored with Lott, then responses to him, including Lawrence Rothenberg & Mitchell Sanders, and... anyway, there's a lot. Get it? "lot?" Damn it, that was funny. Point being, sincere behavior is what you observe after people make their retirement decisions during their "lame duck" periods. Like now, for Ryan and Gowdy, feckless c...ongressmen that they are. In other words, they're just not that fucking crazy. Gowdy? Sure. He's crazy. Benghazi-crazy. He's just not "spygate" crazy, because, c'mon. There are limits.
Paul Ryan, though, is still in a precarious position. I have noted on several occasions that he can be removed as Speaker before his term ends, and that remains a possibility. The House does have a Trump loyalist contingent. A rather large one. It is among the few truly "large" things about Trump, along with his mouth and his ego. This... may not go over well with the Trumpkins.
Let's put that in context, then, shall we? The other thing happening in the House right now is maybe immigration. The discharge petition to put through a Democratic bill is very close to the 218 signature threshold. Ever since that proposal began to circulate, my statements have been that Paul Ryan couldn't let that proposal get a vote because a) if it got a vote, it would probably pass the House, and b) since the hard-line faction of the GOP doesn't want it to pass, they will rebel against Ryan if it gets a floor vote. Therefore, I have argued, Paul Ryan would pull out all the stops to prevent any DACA-related bill from getting a floor vote. So far, he has. There's just the little matter of that discharge petition. If it gets 218 signatures, there's very little he can do after that, so all he can do now is twist arms to prevent those last couple of signatures. As I have also argued, though, this is a stupid game for the House to be playing because the rational move, even for the hard-liners, is to let the Democrats have their vote, and let Donnie veto the bill.
If that discharge petition reaches 218, combine that with Ryan showing disloyalty to Dear Leader... does he make it through the year? One word from Trump and he's out. Between disloyalty on Donny's conspiracy theorizing, what looks like failure on immigration blockage... Ryan might be on his way to early retirement.
I'll add the caveat, though, that Ryan wound up Speaker because the GOP couldn't find anyone else on whom they could agree when they lost their Boehner. Once Ryan is gone, who's next? They don't really know. They need to figure that out by January, with lower stakes if the Democrats take the House, but procrastination may save Ryan through the year.
Hey, kids! Procrastination might save Paul Ryan's job! No, that doesn't give you permission to procrastinate. Come September, get back to work.