Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan have endorsed each other. But they and their supporters often seem like rivals.

Paul Nehlen's primary challenge against Ryan was almost entirely driven by conservative pundits who support Trump, with columnist Ann Coulter making a trip to campaign for Nehlen even after the New York businessman belatedly threw his weight behind the speaker. It wasn't sufficiently driven by Wisconsin Republicans, however, which is why he lost by 70 points.

When Ryan claimed victory, he appeared at times to be rebuking Trump. "In times as uncertain as these, it is easy to resort to division," he said at this post-primary press conference. "That stuff sells, but it doesn't stick. It doesn't last. Most of all, it doesn't work."

In an optimistic video about the GOP's "better way," Ryan said Americans should not "simply react to the news of the day" or "just chase the loudest voices." He added that "ideas are really what make this country great, and we have ideas for making this country great."

"We have ideas for getting this country on the right track," Ryan continued. "And so it's very clear that there are going to be noise and news of the day that can clearly distract government. It can distract Congress. It can distract the people of this country." He vowed that by pushing good ideas, Republicans can "cut through all the noise."

Noise? Loud voices? Distracting news of the day? Making America great and getting the country back on the right track? In social media, this would be called a subtweet: an often critical reference to someone without naming them directly.

Publicly, Ryan says all the right things about Trump. "He won the votes fair and square, he won more votes than anybody else ... so he is the nominee," Ryan told an anti-Trump Wisconsin voter. "He got 14 million votes, and nobody else got close to that. So that's just the way the system works."

Yet the speaker doesn't hesitate to criticize Trump when he thinks the presidential nominee is out of line. "This is not conservatism," he said of Trump's proposal to curb Muslim immigration. "This is not who we are," he has said of multiple Trump statements.

Ryan gets a lot of grief from conservatives who are disappointed he endorsed Trump for president. But at times, Ryan's tentative embrace of the nominee followed by regular criticism has been more effective at undercutting Trump than the work of Never Trumpers.

Trump himself certainly seemed to think so when he went out of his way to tell reporters he wasn't "there yet" on a Ryan endorsement, aping language the speaker used when he was deliberating about whether he was going to support Trump and throwing some positive attention Nehlen's way.

The relationship between the two men is purely transactional. Ryan believes a President Trump would sign more Republican bills into law than a President Hillary Clinton. He also likely hopes Trump at least does well enough to not be a drag on the party's congressional majorities.

Trump is overly reliant on the Republican National Committee for a lot of the nuts and bolts of his campaign, including his battleground state get-out-the-vote operation. The RNC is chaired by one of Ryan's fellow Wisconsin Republicans, Reince Priebus. It is a rare bridge Trump ultimately can't burn, which may be why he uncharacteristically backed down and offered supportive words for Ryan, John McCain and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte in Green Bay.

But Trump and Ryan obviously have huge differences on trade, immigration, entitlement reform and foreign policy. While it is an open question how much of Trump's appeal was based on his own personal qualities as a businessman and celebrity as opposed how much it was conservatives taking his side in a nationalism versus globalism argument, it's clear that neither Ryanism nor Trumpism in their purest forms speak for the entire GOP base or have yet reached enough voters beyond it.

Trump winning the Republican presidential nomination appeared to be a rejection of Ryan-style conservatism. Ryan's huge win over Nehlen is a data point for arguing Trump isn't about any movement or ideas larger than himself, although another Trump-like Republican named Jason Lewis easily won his primary in Minnesota the same night.

It's a debate that won't be over anytime soon and that even the November results won't resolve completely.