Paul Ryan in January: “Am I going to be speaker? Yes, if we keep the majority”
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, announced Wednesday that he would not run for reelection in 2018. Ryan's future plans had been the subject of rumors for months, so the announcement, while significant, was not a complete surprise.
Still, as recently as January, the House speaker was suggesting that he would stay put in Congress. In an interview that aired on January 21, CBS News' John Dickerson asked Ryan whether he would still be speaker if Republicans held onto their majority in November's midterm elections.
"Am I going to be Speaker? Yes, if we keep the majority, then the Republican Speaker," Ryan responded. "Look, if we're doing fine, I have no plans of going anywhere any time soon."
Ryan kept the door to retirement cracked open just a bit, though. "You're asking me if I'm going to run for reelection? That's a decision my wife and I always make each and every term when we have filing in Wisconsin late in spring. And I haven't – I'm not going to share my thinking with you before I even talk to my wife," the speaker said with a laugh.
A person familiar with Ryan's eventual decision to retire told CBS News on Wednesday that Ryan first started discussing the possibility "late last year."
"There's been a conversation taking place for a number of months with a small group of staff and his family," the source said. "This has been a direction that he has been heading in for a while…this has been an evolution, but I expected this was where it would end up."