His justification for this approach is simple: The alternative could have been worse. If Ryan went after Trump every day, and the president went nuclear and pushed him out of the speakership, then who would be left to lead the House? Kevin McCarthy, a yes-man with far less inclination to tangle with Trump? Or perhaps one of the Freedom Caucus honchos, Jim Jordan or Mark Meadows, hard-liners known to encourage the president’s most self-destructive impulses? Like many of his allies in the administration — Jim Mattis, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson — Ryan believed that only by avoiding public confrontation with the president could he retain his influence, and that only by retaining his influence could he help mitigate the damage being done by Trump.

“Those of us around him really helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time,” Ryan says. “It worked pretty well. He was really deferential and kind of learning the ropes. … We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was.”

Of course, Mattis and Kelly and Tillerson served as the pleasure of the president. Ryan did not. He was charged with leading a co-equal branch of the federal government, the one assigned primacy under Article I of the Constitution, the one responsible for checking the excesses and abuses of the executive. It’s true that speaking out might have cost him his job. But it’s also true that Ryan’s silence — and the silence of so many Republicans, from party leaders to rank-and-file members — emboldened Trump to push his rhetoric into ever-darker places.