Former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Monday mocked an “unemployed” former President Donald Trump as having nothing better to do but “cause trouble” since leaving the White House.
In an interview on “The View,” Boehner says he’s “not in the political world these days,” and tries to stay “as far away as possible,” but ventured an opinion on why Trump continues to push back at his election loss to President Joe Biden.
“Here’s a guy who’s unemployed, has nothing else to do except to cause trouble,” Boehner said. “And clearly, it’s obvious to me that he’s not going away.”
“I think what Republicans need to do is act like Republicans,” Boehner said. “I’m a conservative Republican but I’m not crazy. I believe in fiscal responsibility. I believe in a strong national defense.”
“We need to rally the party around what being a Republican means,” he continued. “And those principles are pretty straightforward and pretty simple.”
The sharp criticism came after Boehner was asked by co-host Sara Haines when the GOP “wake-up call” was coming, given that many Republican officials refuse to refute Trump’s claims about the 2020 election.
“The president abused the loyalty and the trust that voters had placed in him by perpetuating this noise,” Boehner said, adding that it was one of “the sadder things I’ve seen in the last 40 years in politics.”
Boehner’s blast is the latest he’s aimed at Trump during his recent promotion of his new book, “On the House: A Washington Memoir” due out Tuesday.
Trump’s “refusal to accept the result of the election not only cost Republicans the Senate but led to mob violence. … It was painful to watch,” he wrote about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to excerpts published by the New York Times.
“I’ll admit I wasn’t prepared for what came after the election — Trump refusing to accept the results and stoking the flames of conspiracy that turned into violence in the seat of our democracy, the building over which I once presided.”
Some Republicans have blasted back at Boehner, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who Boehner described as a “jerk” in the book.
“I wear with pride his drunken, bloviated scorn,” Cruz tweeted Friday. He then jabbed: “Please don’t cry.”
Boehner, who served in the House from 1991 to 2015 and was its speaker from 2011 to 2015, described his work during former President Barack Obama’s tenure as becoming the “mayor” of “Crazytown,” the Washington Post reported from the book.
Other Republicans also blasted the bashing.
Former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who served with the former speaker, told Newsmax: “I didn’t consider Boehner a true conservative and nobody else I knew did. He was more about cutting deals.”
And ex-Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., who is Indiana’s state attorney general, told Newsmax he’s disappointed by Boehner’s trashing “Tea Party” Republicans.
“John misunderstood the mandate of 2010,” he said. “In 2010, the voters were sending a very clear message that they wanted the opposite of where we were going under Barack Obama. And you couldn’t compromise with the Democrats. Time has proven the conservatives right.”
Source: Newmax
