Paul Ryan is not a guest in any of the excerpts below. He enters The Bob Zadek Show as a name invoked by other guests — a marker for congressional leadership, for budget priorities, and for the point at which proposed reforms stopped. The excerpts attribute no statement directly to Ryan and describe no interview with him.
Defense spending (2011)
In a June 2011 episode with Nick Gillespie, a caller identified as Ronald argued for cutting the Department of Education and the EPA, and said defense should “take a hit too.” Gillespie rejected the caller’s suggestion that the 9/11 attacks were engineered by anyone other than Al-Qaeda, calling that implication nuts, but agreed with the caller on defense spending. He said defense spending since 2000 had essentially doubled, and that the budgets submitted by President Obama and by Paul Ryan, whom he described as the conservative Republican, each jacked up defense spending over the next decade — Obama’s even more than Ryan’s. Gillespie put the 2000 figure at about $400 billion a year in current dollars and current spending at closer to $800 billion, with Obama on track for closer to a trillion in ten years. He said the country was in at least three elective wars with no clear endpoint or objective, and that conservatives wrongly treat any defense spending as exempt from the corporate-welfare charge. Nick Gillespie – The Voice of Reason (2011)
Bob Zadek added that the federal department was originally called the Department of War, that it changed its name in 1947 with consolidation to the Department of Defense, and that only the name changed while the mission remained offensive. He said the money spent on defense could buy every American a personal bodyguard and hazmat suit and disband the armed forces. Gillespie called that about as close to the truth as it needs to get, noted the US had been in Afghanistan more than twice as long as in World War II, and said surveys showed Americans of virtually every stripe wanted a fundamental reset of foreign policy. Nick Gillespie – The Voice of Reason (2011)
Healthcare and entitlements (2018)
In a September 2018 episode, Bob Zadek asked Frank Buckley whether Trump’s identification with the blue-collar voter explained why Trump was sympathetic to the entitlement system and did not make entitlement reform an important goal. Buckley answered that feeling an identity with ordinary Americans brings a sense of responsibility toward those who cannot help themselves. He cited healthcare: Trump said he wanted not just to repeal Obamacare but to repeal and replace it. Buckley said he had briefed people on the Canadian national health system, telling them it needed improvement but was nowhere near as bad as people said, and that Trump bought that. Then, Buckley said, Trump ran into the separation of powers and Paul Ryan, and nothing happened — though Buckley called it quite doable. The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018)
Buckley described Obamacare as a complete mess and gave figures: 400,000 Americans have severe pre-existing conditions and cannot help themselves, while the 8 million people in the Obamacare exchanges must cross-subsidize those 400,000. He argued all of America should pick up the tab for the 400,000, which would solve the exchange problem by itself. He said people who want to preserve a perfect free-market healthcare system in the United States are nuts, since the country is already 50% national health through Medicare and Medicaid, and the tax code’s treatment of employee contributions creates crazy incentives. The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018)
Progressive conservatism (2022)
In a July 2022 episode, Buckley said he worked on the Trump campaign and pitched Jared Kushner the idea that the big issue was the rise of aristocracy and the decline of economic mobility, which became a theme of the campaign. He said those issues went nowhere with Trump, that Trump disgraced himself on January 6th, and that even before then he was a failure as president because of an inability to cut deals. In the first two years, Buckley said, domestic policy was basically run by the Paul Ryans; for two years thereafter came the Russian collusion matter, which he called absolutely horrible for America and which he said prevented a deal with Putin. Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022)
Buckley described the Trump campaign as alive to themes he tied to Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Eisenhower, and said Trump discovered the sweet spot in American politics — a middle-of-the-road movement he called progressive conservatism, last best expressed by Eisenhower. He said he was asked to write an inauguration speech, bought a book of presidential inauguration speeches, and drafted something Kennedy-esque and “let’s come together” in spirit; he heard the delivered speech from the Canadian embassy and realized it was not his but Steve Bannon’s. He said Trump surrounded himself with incompetence, cronies, sycophants and a sleazy group of people, many distinctly illiberal, and that a nationalist must adopt the values of the Founders — citing Lincoln’s July 4th, 1858 speech and the electric cord of the words of the Declaration. Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022)
In a late July 2022 episode, Buckley proposed debt relief for students burdened by educational loans as the progressive half of his program, arguing most of those loans will never be paid and are already bad debts, and that making people debt slaves invites socialism. He paired it with a conservative half: the burden should fall on the universities. He said the US subsidized the loans by covering carrying charges until graduation, making money look cheap, while other first-world countries required universities to cap tuition in exchange — a cap the US did not impose, with tuition now in the vicinity of $60,000–$70,000 a year in many places. He proposed capping federal support at something like $25,000 a year, telling universities that want to charge more to fire their diversity officers and drop stupid courses, and said if universities bore the tab for bad debt, crazy courses and gender studies courses would disappear quickly. Trumpism After Trump (2022)
On healthcare, Buckley said a majority of Americans worry about catastrophic medical costs — not $25 copays but going to the hospital and walking out bankrupt — and that a government-run national catastrophic plan would be immediately obviously superior to Obamacare, is supported by most Americans, and exists in some form in every other first-world country; no conservative leader, not Margaret Thatcher, would want to touch it. He said in that respect he is less than libertarian, and that the greatest threat to such a plan would be a sense that government plays favorites. Bob Zadek responded that government should have no role, that insurers should be allowed to offer catastrophic coverage at market prices, and that if Americans cannot afford it and the country believes they should have it, the political system could give them a subsidy. Zadek asked whether Buckley meant availability at market rates or a right the government must supply. Trumpism After Trump (2022)
Buckley answered by returning to Trump as a nationalist who recognized the leftward gravitational force of nationalism regarding government’s duties to those who cannot look after themselves. He said he told one of Trump’s kids that Canadian Medicare is better than people say but could be done better, and the next day Trump repeated the line — but Trump never had a chance to do anything because he was rolled by Paul Ryan and a right-wing Congress. Buckley recalled that Eisenhower had a plan for government subsidy of health insurance programs rather like the Obamacare subsidies, that a right-wing Republican Congress turned him down, and that Ike was furious and said maybe he would run as leader of a different party next time. Buckley noted that 3.5% of 2016 voters were libertarian — economically right-wing and socially liberal — and split between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, so they did not count for very much. Trumpism After Trump (2022)
Across episodes
Ryan’s name recurs across 2011, 2018 and 2022, but the excerpts show no development in how it is used: in 2011 Nick Gillespie cites Ryan’s budget as proof that a conservative Republican also jacks up defense spending, while in 2018 and 2022 F.H. Buckley cites Ryan as the congressional force that blocked healthcare and entitlement action under Trump. The two treatments are not reconciled in the excerpts, and no guest addresses Ryan’s own positions.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no interview with Paul Ryan, no quotation from him, and no account of his own arguments. They do not state his title, district, committee roles, or the contents of any budget he authored beyond the defense-spending characterization Gillespie gives. Nothing in the excerpts describes Ryan’s votes, his retirement, or his relationship to the events of January 6th.