White House Literally Laughs Out Loud at ‘Encouraging’ Trump Ryan Meeting

As the cable news world waited with apocalyptic urgency for Donald Trump to meet with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan for what everyone agreed to agree was a “great conversation,” the current occupants of the White House were having a good laugh right in their faces. At Thursday’s White House daily briefing, CNN correspondent Suzanne Malveaux tried to get a hot take out of Press Secretary Josh Earnest by asking if the Republican’s apparent show of unity “puts the Democrats behind,” but instead elicited laughter and a harsh review of the joint statement issued following the meeting:

You surely have better-informed, more experienced, and surely higher-paid analysts who can examine the faultlines in the Republican Party. But even as a novice, even the joint statement that I read with some amusement today from Speaker Ryan and the presumptive Republican nominee indicates that this was only their first meeting.

Earnest went on to list a number of Republican priorities that Speaker Ryan’s House has declined to take action on, including funding to combat the Zika virus, and indicated that Ryan ought to get on board with his own agenda before trying to sway Trump.

Malveaux then asked Earnest if the meeting constituted a “genuine show of unity” that could be “dangerous from the administration’s point of view,” and Earnest was characteristically dismissive:

I don’t know anybody here that’s going to lose any sleep over the meeting.