Trump, Ryan, and the search for common ground

WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan met face-to-face for the first time Thursday as they sought to repair their breach and unify a party torn over Trump's rise to the cusp of the GOP presidential nomination.

The much-anticipated meeting unfolded Thursday morning as polls suggest Republican voters are getting behind Trump, who effectively clinched the nomination last week.

GOP lawmakers increasingly are calling for the party to end its bout of infighting and unite to beat likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November, and many want to see Ryan get on board.

"The meeting was great," Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, tweeted after. "It was a very positive step toward party unity."

Priebus attended the opening meeting with the two before Trump and Ryan sat down with a small group of GOP House leaders.

Trump entered the RNC building, the venue a few blocks from the Capitol, through a side door as about a dozen protesters who oppose his immigration positions demonstrated at the front, chanting, "Down, down with deportation. Up, up with liberation."

They tried to deliver a cardboard coffin to the RNC representing the suffering of immigrants under GOP policies and what they said will be the death of the party under Trump. They were not allowed inside.

Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas walked by and remarked Trump is "tearing people apart. You can see the circus out here. He's just bad for the country."

Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, a Trump supporter, said it will help both the candidate and the speaker if they can work through their differences.

"I don't think it's do or die, any endorsement in particular," he said outside the building. But "Donald Trump's candidacy is strengthened with an endorsement from the most powerful person, top-ranking Republican in the country. It helps."

Before the meeting, Ryan insisted party unity was his goal.

A week earlier, he refused to endorse Trump, a slight the billionaire said "blindsided" him.

"We come from different wings of the party," Ryan said Wednesday. "The goal here is to unify the various wings of the party around common principles, so that we can go forward to unify it."

On the eve of the meetings, Trump eased his defiant tone of recent days.

Asked on Fox News who leads the party in his view, he said Ryan.

"I would say Paul for the time being and maybe for a long time," he said.

"We can always have differences," he said. "If you agree on 70 percent, that's always a lot."

The two men represent vastly different visions for the Republican Party, and whether they can come together may foretell whether the GOP will heal itself after a bruising primary season or face irrevocable rupture.

Trump, for years a registered Democrat, has offended women, Hispanics, and others while violating establishment party orthodoxy on numerous issues Ryan holds dear, from trade to wages to religious freedom.

Ryan, a policy-focused conservative, insists the GOP must be a party of ideas and has championed an agenda that has drawn Trump's scorn by pushing cuts in Medicare and other government programs.