House Speaker Paul Ryan Cancels First Joint Campaign Event With Trump After Lewd Tape Release

House speaker Paul Ryan has issued a statement saying Donald Trump is no longer scheduled to campaign with him in Wisconsin on Saturday after the Washington Post released an audio tape of a lewd conversation from 2005 between his party’s presidential candidate and Billy Bush. Ryan instead will campaign with Trump’s veep candidate Mike Pence at Elkhorn’s “fall fest” in Ryan’s home state. Saturday’s event was to have been Ryan’s first joint campaign appearance with Trump.

The Washington Post‘s release of video and audio tape from 2005 in which the married Trump is heard telling the then-Access Hollywood host Bush that his fame brings him the ability to kiss and grab the genitals of women. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump says in the tape. News networks have been playing the tape all afternoon, with CNN warning its viewers Trump’s language is “obscene.”

“I am sickened by what I heard today,” Ryan said in a statement sent to reporters tonight. “Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.”

Ryan’s statement,  less than two days before Trump is scheduled to debate Hillary Clinton again, had pundits reminiscing about when Ryan finally endorsed Trump back in June, only to have to denounce as “the textbook definition of racism” remarks Trump made the next day about the fitness of a federal judge because of his heritage.

“I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests. In the meantime, he is no longer attending tomorrow’s event in Wisconsin.”