tonight we welcome former house speaker
john boehner
he is the author of a new book on the
house a washington memoir
causing quite a fuss here in washington
uh mr speaker thanks so much for being
here
brett it's good to be with you you know
you've you know joe biden for many many
years you've called him a good guy
somebody that you could work with i'm
just curious to you heard jackie's piece
and
president biden what you see of these
first days
in office so far pushing things through
with democratic votes
saying that bipartisanship is really
republican voters in the country not
republican votes on capitol hill well
you know the press wants to talk about
the schism and the republican party
between the the serious trump people and
the traditional republicans
but there's this schism in the democrat
party that's been
kind of boiling just below the surface
between traditional democrats like
joe biden and the progressive wig of the
democrat party
which joe biden has caved to and came to
and came to repeatedly
uh over the first several months of this
presidency
uh and in getting in the way of working
in a bipartisan fashion
with republican members of congress and
so
uh i understand the the the verbal
gymnastics
that politicians go through i was never
very good at it
i always thought that speaking english
always served me a lot better
you know the republicans of the last
four years didn't really seem to push
concern about deficit and debt in your
days with
dealing with president obama you had the
opportunity
with the simpson bowles commission to
kind of go down this road
but you could never get it across the
finish line with president obama
um is that ever possible do you think
that was my greatest disappointment
right it really was
and uh i wish we could have gotten there
uh we would have put america on a path
toward fiscal sanity for the long term
but it didn't happen uh but we did cut
the deficit five consecutive years
uh while i'm a speaker barack obama was
president and harry reid was
majority leader for most of that time so
there is a way to handle the spending
issue
uh but at some point you're going to pay
the paper you can't run your household
uh when you keep spending more than what
you bring in you can't run a business
that way
and your government can't run that way
either
yeah i'm curious mr speaker you write in
the book uh this page 61
i don't think ronald reagan would
recognize the republican party today and
he sure as hell couldn't get elected in
it
as a matter of fact reagan would be the
most left-wing candidate in the gop
these days by a mile how do you describe
a trump voter clearly in 2016 he
expanded the base for republicans
white workers uh men and women so
so how saying that how do you explain
the trump phenomena over
2016 and 2020 trump somebody you voted
for
in 2020 ronald reagan raised taxes
ronald reagan was not uh was actually
pro-abortion
uh if he looked through reagan's record
uh he was the most pragmatic republican
uh that uh that we've ever elected uh
but he was a great communicator
and frankly he's the reason i became a
republican i'm far more conservative
than he is
or than he was uh but uh what what
donald trump did uh was to take a lot of
disaffected voters
some republicans some independents and
frankly a lot of democrats
uh disaffected by uh the eight years of
barack obama
uh the poor economic recovery what we
saw after
uh 2008 and uh he appealed to them
and brought them into the party and
frankly kept them even
most of them in 2020
but you're pretty critical of him in
this book i mean you're not you're
unvarnished in your criticism of him
listen donald trump will die nominee
if john donald trump needs 2024 would
you support him mr speaker
uh listen i don't do hypotheticals that
doesn't do anybody any good uh but
donald trump and i've been friends for a
long time
i supported him in 2016 and i voted
again for him in 2020
but that doesn't mean that i wasn't
critical about all the tweeting that
went on
and certainly i was very unhappy and
sad about what happened after the
election
no one's gonna ask you this question
except here at one point you were
convinced that there were the obama
administration badly
misled the american people on benghazi
in fact you set up trey gowdy to run
that commission lead that special
investigation
what happened who was responsible did
you learn anything from the
investigation do you regret going down
that road
no i don't at all brett because i still
have
doubts about what happened in benghazi i
think trey gowdy and his committee did
as good a job as they could do
given the information they were allowed
to receive
uh but i tell you what there are there
are questions about this that
that bother me uh because i am not at
all
sure that everything that was could have
been done was done
to save the lives of those americans who
died olivia
why is it that nancy pelosi can get
democrats to vote for something
even when they're really opposed to her
and republican speakers including
yourself had a tough time
hurting the cats for big votes
over the years i've watched this
democrats tend to act
more as a herd than do republicans
republicans frankly by their very nature
are more independent and so uh pelosi
has had an easier time
up to this point uh i think uh in the
coming weeks and months
uh this infrastructure is gonna bill's
gonna be around for a long time
uh because uh it's the real divisions
in the democrat party are about uh to uh
show their colors
uh between the far left and the from
what i'll call the traditional democrat
members
in both the house and the senate and so
uh anybody thinks your taxes is going up
anytime soon
relax anybody thinks this bill is going
to pass anytime soon
relax it's not going to happen
what is the deal with ted cruz
listen this guy wasn't even a member of
the house he was a member of the senate
the guys always stirring up trouble with
with some of the knuckleheads in my
caucus
you know 210 of my republican colleagues
were great members
uh great to work with but there were 20
or 30 of them
uh there were they weren't conservative
hell i'm a conservative republican
they were knuckleheads and ted cruz came
over and kept
winding them up uh to to do crazy things
that have never had a chance of becoming
law all they were gonna do
is cause problems and uh and so uh
over the years i've just decided screw
intent crews
well today he tweeted out and i know
it's been going back and forth but today
he tweeted out some smart ass dropped
off a copy of boehner's new book at my
office
it's even signed i filed it in the
appropriate
place showing a picture of the fireplace
so i guess this is going to go back and
forth
i want to end with this pope francis
visited you in 2015
on capitol hill uh and you were seemed
touched by this visit
very touched and in his speech the pope
said another
temptation which we must especially
guard against the simplistic
reductionism
which sees only good or evil or if you
will the righteous
and the sinners i guess this book is
filled with ripping on a lot of people
mr speaker including ted cruz in one
interview you called him lucifer
incarnate um
is that what the pope was talking about
listen uh
i'm pretty good to most people in the
book that ted cruz gets the worst of it
now there are a few other people i nudge
but uh listen
i've had a really interesting life a
very interesting career
uh i've decided you know i think i'll
write a book
i think people might find this
interesting it was a great exercise i'm
glad i did it
and for for those who i've stepped under
toes for a little bit
it's okay it doesn't cost anything i
tell you what it is
it is an interesting read uh mr speaker
we appreciate your time
uh and uh enjoy the sunshine down there
in florida
thanks brett