Trump and House Speaker Ryan meet on Capitol Hill, seek to put campaign tensions behind them

President-elect Donald Trump made his first joint public appearance with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Wis., on Thursday, appearing before cameras after a meeting that seemed to tamp down months of tension between the two Republicans.

"We're looking forward to doing some spectacular things for the American people," Trump said in brief remarks after his meeting with Ryan, specifically mentioning lower taxes and health care as shared priorities.

He did not take questions and did not give an explicit endorsement for Ryan's continued service as speaker, but the meeting Thursday had the unmistakable feel of a summit between two governing partners who expect to spend the months to come advancing a shared agenda. Trump later met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in his Capitol office.

[Trump meets with Obama in White House as transition begins]

Thursday's meeting served as denouement after a campaign season in which the Ryan-Trump relationship emerged as a major story line. Ryan spoke out on several occasions to denounce Trump's comments – on his proposed ban on Muslim immigration and his criticism of a Mexican American federal judge, to name two – and when Trump clinched the Republican nomination in April, Ryan initially withheld his endorsement, citing his desire to support a "standard bearer who bears our standards."

The two men met privately in Washington shortly afterward, but they were never seen together in public at any point during the long campaign. They eventually settled into an uneasy truce, with Ryan stumping for Republicans and the conservative policy agenda he assembled with the help of fellow House members without appearing alongside Trump on the hustings.

Tensions flared again in early October, after The Washington Post published a video that captured Trump bragging about kissing and grabbing women without their consent – prompting scores of GOP lawmakers to speak out against him. Ryan convened a conference call of House Republicans, which he opened by declaring that he would no longer defend Trump as a candidate – though he said he still planned to vote for Trump and urge voters to elect Republicans up and down the ballot.

Trump and his allies on and off Capitol Hill, however, saw Ryan's move as an act of betrayal – not as an act calibrated to ensure that Republicans maintained their commanding House majority.

Trump tweet: "Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty."

But Trump has kept silent on Ryan since, and Tuesday's results – which included better-than-expected showings by Republicans in both the House and the Senate – have quieted a great deal of the internal unrest that threatened to end Ryan's speakership if Democrats had kept control of the White House.

One senior Republican said Wednesday that Ryan is "about to become Donald's best friend in Congress."

"He's still the indispensable guy," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. "Whatever differences they had in the past, they each need one another to be successful. Trump needs somebody that can unite the Republican caucus and move things through. Obviously, Ryan needs someone who can sign something. We now have that."

After lunch at the Capitol Hill Club, a Republican haunt a block from the Capitol, Ryan invited Trump to his office suite and invited him to the Speaker's Balcony on the Capitol's west front, which looks out across the National Mall toward the Washington Monument and the White House. It also looks down on the inauguration stand that is now being erected ahead of the Jan. 20 ceremony – and it has a clear view of Trump's new D.C. hotel in the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

"Really, really beautiful," Trump said as he passed reporters afterward.

The meetings offered GOP leaders an opportunity to learn about Trump's policy goals for the first 100 days of his presidency, according to aides. McConnell and Ryan both avoided committing Wednesday to a list of legislative priorities for the lame duck session set to begin next week, in deference to Trump's wishes.

"It is very exciting to be going into a lame duck where we have a Republican president following right after it," Ryan said Wednesday. "I'm excited about that and we're going to coordinate with our president-elect on just what they're hoping we can achieve in the lame duck. "

Lawmakers and staff were unprepared for a lame duck session ahead of a Trump presidency, according to several aides. Leaders assumed they would be negotiating a year-end deal ahead of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Rank-and-file members entertained plans for how they would react if Democrats won the Senate but never what they would do with GOP control in both Congress and the White House, the aides said.

Part of the problem is that Trump shifted his positions on critical issues like Obamacare, immigration and tax reform several times during the campaign. Leaders are hoping to clarify what Trump's priorities are in the coming days so that members can be briefed when they return to Washington next week.

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Karoun Demirjian, Paul Kane and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.