Ex-House Speaker Boehner unloads on former Republican colleagues
By Mike Murphy
Published: Oct 30, 2017 5:26 a.m. ET
Ohio Republican blasts Chaffetz, Jordan, conservative commentators
Republican John Boehner was House Speaker for nine years.
MikeMurphy
In candid and often profane terms, former Speaker of the House John Boehner unloaded on former Republican rivals and conservative commentators in an interview published Sunday night by Politico.
"We've got some of the smartest people in America who serve in the Congress, and we've got some of the dumbest. We have some of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, and some that are Nazis. Congress is nothing more than a slice of America."
The Ohio Republican spent 25 years in the House before resigning in 2015 after growing friction with the party's more conservative wing.
In the wide-ranging profile by Politico, Boehner got particularly blunt when discussing the possibility of Rep. Trey Gowdy becoming the chair of the House Oversight Committee, following the resignation of Rep. Jason Chaffetz. Conservatives were hoping Rep. Jim Jordan would seek the chair.
"Gowdy — that's my guy, even though he doesn't know how to dress," Boehner told Politico. "F--- Jordan. F--- Chaffetz. They're both assholes."
He then called Chaffetz a "total phony" — "With Chaffetz, it's always about Chaffetz," he said.
As for Jordan, a fellow Ohio Republican: "Jordan was a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio House and Senate," Boehner said. "A terrorist. A legislative terrorist."
Boehner said he worries about the deepening political fissures in America, and said media echo chambers are making American voters less informed. He blamed conservative radio host Mark Levin for dragging Rush Limbaugh and Fox News host Sean Hannity "to the dark side."
"These guys — I used to talk to them all the time," Boehner told Politico. "And suddenly they're beating the living shit out of me. . . . I had a conversation with Hannity, probably about the beginning of 2015. I called him and said, 'Listen, you're nuts.' We had this really blunt conversation. Things were better for a few months, and then it got back to being the same-old, same-old. Because I wasn't going to be a right-wing idiot."
Boehner also decried the current state of Republican politics, and appeared glad to have stepped away from the fray ahead of Donald Trump's presidency.
"And then there's the White House," Boehner told Politico. "Dysfunction is a relative term. Right now it looks like I was a genius."