Identity politics are "out of control" in the United States, and that could be a dangerous trend, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Friday morning.
"I think identity politics has gotten out of control in our country," Ryan, R-Wisconsin, told "CBS This Morning," while reacting to former President George W. Bush's speech decrying the increasing division in the country.
"I think identity politics is being played on the left and on the right and I think it's really dangerous for our country," Ryan continued. "It seeks to exploit fear, ignorance and seeks to exploit differences among people and prey on those people. That is how you disunify a culture, a society and a country. That's how you disunify a culture and a country. There are some who believe it's immoral and it is and some believe it's the way to win an election."
He went on to describe white supremacy as a "severe, awful, dark form of identity politics."
"Look, I'm conservative," Ryan said. "There are liberals. That's one thing. We all want to help our country and help people and unify. We have different ideas and principles on how to achieve that goal, but when you're playing identity politics, you're trying to divide the country and citizens against one another for some political gain. That's a political tactic that unfortunately has been tried over and over, much more lately and that's wrong."
Ryan on Friday also congratulated Senate Republicans for voting to pass a budget resolution late Thursday night, as that was necessary to move tax reform legislation forward.
He also denied comments that the GOP plan is designed to lower taxes for the wealthy, saying that it's "going to be designed to lower tax rates for people in the middle, not at the high end."
"You double the standard deduction, they don't have to itemize," Ryan said. "You lower it, that means less of their income is being taxed. You increase the child tax credit. All of those things benefit everybody in the middle class."
He said the numbers on the bill will be finalized within days, and then the whole bill can be released to the public.
"If this was a tax increase on the middle-class, we wouldn't be doing this," Ryan said. "This is about lowering people's taxes in the middle-class, simplifying the tax system and growing this economy."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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