WASHINGTON — Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan are sitting down face-to-face for the first time, a week after Ryan stunned Republicans by refusing to back the mercurial billionaire for president.

The much-anticipated meeting opened Thursday morning as polls suggest Republican voters are getting behind Trump, who effectively clinched the nomination last week. GOP lawmakers are increasingly calling for the party to end its embarrassing bout of infighting and unite to beat likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November, and many want to see Ryan get on board.

Trump entered the Republican National Committee building, the venue a few blocks from the Capitol, through a side door as about a dozen protesters who oppose his immigration positions demonstrated at the front, chanting “Down, down with deportation. Up, up with liberation.”

Before the meeting, Ryan insisted party unity was his goal.

“We come from different wings of the party,” he said Wednesday. “The goal here is to unify the various wings of the party around common principles, so that we can go forward to unify it.”

“I don’t really know him,” Ryan said of Trump, noting they’ve met only once, briefly, at a fundraiser in 2012 when Ryan was his party’s vice presidential nominee. “We just need to get to know each other.”

For his part Trump insisted defiantly that he doesn’t need the blessing of Ryan or other Republican leaders wary of the candidate.