Paul Ryan Reportedly ‘Caught off Guard’ by Trump’s 2016 Win; Researched Narcissistic Personality Disorder

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A new report says that former House Speaker Paul Ryan prepared himself for Donald Trump’s presidency by researching how to handle people with narcissistic personality disorder.

Business Insider has obtained a new excerpt of Peril, the upcoming book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on the tumultuous end of Trump’s presidency. According to the preview, Ryan was “caught off guard” when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, but since he knew that he was going to have to work with Trump, he started to do research on how to deal with someone who is “amoral and transactional.”

The book goes on to say that at one point, Ryan was contacted by a wealthy doctor in New York. The doctor was also described as a Republican donor who told Ryan “You need to understand what narcissistic personality disorder is.”

“The doctor sent the Wisconsin Republican an email detailing his thoughts on how to best deal with a person with anti-social personality disorder,” the book says. “Ryan studied them for weeks, convinced Trump had the personality disorder.”

Throughout the course of his political life, Trump has made his disdain for Ryan abundantly clear, and their political relationship has been filled with tension. To that point, Peril includes an anecdote where Trump reportedly stormed at Ryan after the latter criticized the former president’s response to Charlottesville.

From Business Insider:

Trump called Ryan afterward and blew up at him over the statement, shouting, “You’re not in the foxhole with me!”

“Are you finished?” Ryan reportedly yelled back. “May I have some time to speak now? You’re the president of the United States. You have a moral leadership obligation to get this right and not declare there is a moral equivalency here.”

But Trump refused to back down, saying, “These people love me. These are my people. I can’t backstab the people who support me,” according to the book.

When Ryan pointed out that there were white supremacists and neo-Nazis in the crowd, Trump conceded, “Well, yeah, there’s some bad people. I get that. I’m not for that. I’m against all that. But there’s some of those people who are for me. Some of them are good people.”