USA TODAY International Edition
Boehner: Trump ‘ abused’ loyalists
Ex- House speaker’s book rebukes current- day GOP
MARCO ISLAND, Fla. – Former House Speaker John Boehner no longer watches much cable TV news. Noise, he calls it.
It was only when aide John Criscuolo texted him a tweet with some raw video attached – “Trump supporters going at it with the police on the steps of the Capitol,” it read – that he learned the Congress in which he had served for a quarter- century was under siege by a mob.
A mob whose members said they were encouraged by a president from his own party, and one he had sometimes advised.
The insurrection Jan. 6 was a shock but not exactly a surprise, the violent culmination of a decade that landed the GOP in a place Boehner dubs “crazy town”: The rise of the disruptive tea party and the Freedom Caucus. The power of incendiary TV and radio talk show hosts who make media heroes of the political fringe. And the election of the even more disruptive Donald Trump as president.
Boehner’s new book, being published Tuesday by St. Martin’s Press, is titled “On the House: A Washington Memoir.” It is unlike the classic Washington memoir, those soft- focus accounts extolling what- I- achieved in office. “I wasn’t going to write some typical Washington walk,” he told USA TODAY.
In the book, he describes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh.” Freedom Caucus members as “political terrorists” and “far- right knuckleheads.” Former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as “one of the chief crazies.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as smart and stra