Paul Ryan nominated as speaker winning his GOP colleagues votes unanimously

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan arrives for a press conference at the U.S. Capitol this morning. It was a unanimous vote. Trump won the Electoral College but is behind by almost 800,000 votes nationally; the 2016 election was only the fourth time in history that a nominee won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College.

Among Republicans, there was ambiguity as they struggled to determine who was in charge of Trump’s policy agenda.

That show of unity has mostly quieted two groups of Republicans that have been vexed by how Ryan has handled Trump.

Paul Ryan was a vocal critic of president-elect Donald Trump during his campaign, calling Trump’s immigration ideas the “textbook definition of racism”.

An attempt by several Republicans to resurrect earmarks in the new Congress failed Wednesday after House leadership blocked the measure.

How the two men will work with one another is anyone’s guess, but Paul Ryan likely has a hard job ahead.

Yet although he now has the support of his conference, Ryan is not completely in the clear. With Trump adding notable Ryan critic Steven Bannon to his White House team, a re-election of Ryan seemed far from a sure thing.

“Ms. Pelosi enjoys great support in the caucus, and this doesn’t reflect on her”, he said of the party’s worse-than-expected election results.

MARK MEADOWS: Bantering back and forth about who’s going to lead our conference is misplaced energy.

But in the days since Trump’s shocking upset of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton a week ago, Ryan has signaled a willingness to work with the new president and put aside any past conflicts.

Ryan refused to answer directly when Congress would go along with Trump’s plan to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure.

On Tuesday, Ryan sounded chipper to work with the new administration. You can protest all you want that he should have sent uber-conservative bills to Obama and forced Obama to veto them, just to prove a point. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. This is something we share.

He said he has spoken to Trump almost every day since the election and continues to work closely with his transition team to prepare for January.

CHANG: And so for now, a caucus known for its infighting is crowing about newfound harmony. We’ve never had a big disagreement over goals, and it was just tactics.

“If the speaker is good enough for Donald Trump, I think he ought to be good enough for the conference”, Sanford said. If we don’t, we won’t. “Maybe we want to do this with our friends on the other side of the Capitol, on the other side of the aisle”. Democrats postponed their leadership elections, moving them from Thursday until the week after Thanksgiving.