John Boehner pinpoints conservative radio host Mark Levin as part of the "really crazy right" that's responsible for sowing the divisions still affecting the Republican Party today, the former House Speaker told Politico magazine.
"Who was that right-wing guy, [Mark] Levin? He went really crazy right and got a big audience, and he dragged [Sean] Hannity to the dark side. He dragged Rush (Limbaugh) to the dark side," Boehner told Politico in a wide-ranging interview marking the second anniversary of his retirement announcement.
"And these guys — I used to talk to them all the time. And suddenly they're beating the living **** out of me," Boehner told Politico.
"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."
Levin wasn't Boehner's only target on the right:
- On former Congressman Jason Chaffetz: "Total phony," Boehner told Politico. "With Chaffetz, it's always about Chaffetz."
- On former Freedom Caucus chair Jim Jordan: "A legislative terrorist," Boehner said.
- On former Speaker Tom DeLay: We were "never close. Matter of fact, half the stab wounds in my back are from him."
- On former Sen. Jim DeMint: "He ran Heritage (Foundation) into the ground. Heritage was a respected conservative think tank, and he turned it into some half-assed political operation."
- On Sen. Ted Cruz: "He's the most miserable son of a ***** I've ever had to work with."
- On current Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows: "He's an idiot. I can't tell you what makes him tick."
Boehner concedes that there still is a Republican Party, but questions what that means with President Donald Trump the elected leader of the GOP.
"Donald Trump's not a Republican. He's not a Democrat. He's a populist. He doesn't have an ideological bone in his body," Boehner told Politico, adding that he does not believe Trump is a racist or a white supremacist.
So who is the leader of the party?
"There is nobody," says Boehner, who adds that the legacy of his speakership in the House will be "the end of the two-party system," he told Politico.
Further, Boehner says Trump's election was a symptom, not the cause, of the deep divisions that continue to plague the country.
"You go back to [Barack] Obama's campaign in 2008, you know, he was talking about the divide and healing the country and all of that. And some would argue on the right that he did more to divide the country than to unite it. I kind of reject that notion," Boehner told Politico.
Why is that?
"Because it wasn't him!" Boehner told Politico.
"It was modern-day media, and social media, that kept pushing people further right and further left. People started to figure out … they could choose where to get their news. And so what do people do? They choose places they agree with, reinforcing the divide."
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