House Speaker Paul Ryan has spent the better part of a year playing the part of the honorable statesman, the Republican who supposedly conducts himself with grace and dignity despite the fact that his party is swiftly being taken over by a pack of rabid hyenas.

This pose landed Ryan the position of Speaker of the House in October when John Boehner was pushed out, albeit quite willingly, by the yipping animals who took offense at Boehner’s unwillingness to do stupid stuff to appease the base, like shut down the government for funsies. And it’s been serving Ryan well now that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and the press looks, with longing eyes, to Ryan to be the lodestar of seriousness in politics. Nothing wipes out the memory of those goofy workout photos quite so much as having to look at the orange man in the weird toupee pursing his lips at the camera all the time.

But this week should be a stern reminder that Ryan is not the sober-minded legislator he likes to play on TV, but just another bad faith operator who is more interested in pandering to a right-wing base than he is in running an effective government.

Exhibit #1: Pretending that there’s some real scandal to be eked out of this Hillary Clinton email story.

Exhibit #2: Paul Ryan flirts with punishing House Democrats that staged a sit-in demanding votes on gun control.