Watch: Paul Ryan tries to laugh his way out of embarrassing $1.50 tax scam gaffe

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) humiliated himself last weekend by bragging about a $1.50-per-week paycheck increase as a result of the Trump tax scam, and when faced with that comment this week, couldn’t think of a better example.

Ryan tweeted about a high school secretary who noticed the minuscule uptick in her weekly paycheck, then deleted it amid a blizzard of criticism. Even the secretary, Julia Ketchum, later criticized him.

At a weekly House GOP leadership press conference, Ryan was clearly caught off guard when a reporter asked him about his weekend humiliation.

After trying to laugh off the question, Ryan insisted the “average family” is receiving a $2,000 tax cut, which doesn’t account for other changes in the tax law that raise taxes on many of those families, and doesn’t acknowledge that those tax savings diminish every year.

Ryan tried to give another example, but failed to come up with anything more concrete than his earlier boast.

He said that he and his wife were working the concession stand at a local church “and a friend of mine from our parish, working at Home Depot, came up and said ‘Thank you very much for this raise.'” but rather than give a specific figure, Ryan said the man told him it was “real money.”

After the tax scam passed in December, Ryan wasn’t thanking his friend from Home Depot for his support, he was thanking the billionaire Koch brothers.

We may never know the exact amount of “real money” that Ryan’s “friend” was allegedly thanking him for, but it’s probably nowhere near the trillion dollars that the tax scam gave to billionaires and corporations, or the amount they have saved by laying off thousands of workers in the wake of the bill’s passage, or even the $500,000 donation that Ryan received as thanks for the bill.

Ryan may think that his $1.50 gaffe is funny, but for everyday Americans who will feel the effects of this trillion-dollar giveaway to corporations, it’s no laughing matter.