BRET BAIER (HOST): House Speaker Paul Ryan on all of the Sunday shows this weekend. We're back with the panel. Steve, kind of laying down the law there. No immigration reform because they don't trust the president.
STEVE HAYES: He has been, and I think he wanted to reassure conservatives whom he had spoken to before that he wasn't going to pursue this with President Obama. But I also think he believes it. I mean, this is not -- he is not saying anything new. He said this before when the president was promising or threatening to use executive action on immigration. Paul Ryan said it would hurt the trust that Republicans have in the president, and hurt the inability of Republicans to come to some kind of consensus if that's to be found.
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MARA LIASSON: In terms of the first thing about immigration reform, I differ with Steve. The Republican House had already rejected immigration reform before Obama did the executive orders. They're the ones who didn't embrace what Paul Ryan actually was for, which was a path to citizenship. So I think it's a little bit self-serving to say all of the sudden we're not going to do immigration reform because of Obama's executive actions. They already had rejected it.
HAYES: But he had said at the time, this will poison the well. If President Obama goes on and does this, this will poison the well.
LIASSON: Yes. Yes, but they had already rejected it.
BAIER: Fair point, fair point. Charles?
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It is entirely self-serving and that's exactly what you want out of a dynamic Speaker of the House. Yes, of course, the reason that you're not going to do it is because it will split the Republicans gratuitously. You don't want to start, you don't want to have that in an election year. So you want to avoid it, but what you do is you come up with a beautiful explanation that puts the blame on Obama. In part, it's true. Yes, historically it would have happened this way even if Obama hadn't issued the executive order. But remind people that he did issue the executive order. And the other part -- look, this is a combination --
LIASSON: Charles, what a cynic.
KRAUTHAMMER: Well, I'm looking at politics without rose-colored glasses. What I like about Ryan is he does too. He is a visionary. He is utterly sincere about the goals he talked about. And what he wants to do is to go after the ones that are doable and won't split the party. So he gives a list of stuff as he should and that's exactly what he ought to be doing.
