Paul Ryan says Donald Trump won't be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024: 'We all know that he will lose'

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan predicted Donald Trump will not be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee.

Trump is "so much more likely to lose" than any other GOP presidential contender, Ryan said.

"So why would we want to go with that?" he asked.

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Former House Speaker Paul Ryan said former President Donald Trump will not be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024.

By then, Trump's "unelectability will be palpable," the former Republican lawmaker said in a Teneo Insights Series conversation.

"We all know that he will lose," Ryan said. "Or, let me put it this way: We all know that he's so much more likely to lose the White House than anybody else running for president on our side of the aisle. So why would we want to go with that?"

Ryan, the GOP's former 2012 vice presidential nominee, said the only reason he stays relevant is because "everybody's afraid of him" going after them.

"The fact that he polls so much poorer than anybody else running for president, as a Republican against the Democrat, is enough right there. He's gonna know this. And so whether he runs or not, I don't really know if it matters. He's not going to be the nominee," Ryan went on.

Ryan, who had a rocky relationship with Trump, left Congress in January 2019 and is now vice chairman of Teneo, which advises CEOs and executives.

He said Trump will "try and intimidate people out of the race as long as he can." Republican contenders will delay their decisions and wait for someone else to jump in first and "take the ire of Trump."

"It's sort of a prisoner's dilemma," he said.

But he said the person who gets in the race first can also get a jump on signing up donors and supporters and establishing a campaign organization. A handful of people will run because it's the only cycle when they can do it and they can't wait until 2028, he said.

"The one inexhaustible power in politics is ambition. You can count on that," he said.

The only outstanding question, he said, is whether there will be so many "non-Trump" Republicans running that they divide up that vote so that Trump gets the nomination. "But I think you'll see enough of a consolidation in the primary that that's probably not the case," he said.