John Boehner Blasts President Trump as “Unemployed” on ‘The View’

The ladies of The View were relatively tame on today’s program, but guest former Speaker of the House John Boehner kept his feud with President Donald Trump alive. Boehner not only blamed Trump for the deadly January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol that claimed lives and threatened our democracy, but blasted Trump as being “unemployed.” “He has nothing else to do but cause trouble. And clearly, it’s obvious to me that he’s not going to go away,” Boehner said, before launching into his prescription for the Republican party.

The View opened today’s episode with an intense conversation about the epidemic of police violence against Black Americans before welcoming John Boehner to the show. The former Speaker of the House and Ohio Congressperson was there to promote his new memoir, cheekily titled On the House: A Washington Memoir. In the book, Boehner shares his thoughts on Ted Cruz — whom he calls “Lucifer incarnate” — but his meatiest commentary on current political affairs happens when he blames former President Trump for instigating the January 6 Capital riots.

Joy Behar kicked the segment off by asking Boehner about this, which he described as “actual terrorism” in his book. When Behar pressed Boehner about whether or not the Congresspeople who had supported the riot should be dealt with criminally as terrorists, the former Speaker pivoted to lamenting Trump’s involvement in it all.

“Well, listen this is politics, it’s not about some criminal proceeding,” Boehner said. “I watched [Trump] before the election, hearing the President talk about how the election’s going to be stolen from him. And then we get to post-election months and he kept talking about how this election was being stolen. I kept looking for facts. And unfortunately I never saw any facts and I don’t think the American people ever saw any facts.”

Boehner continued, “And the saddest part of this, beyond the riot that did occur at the Capitol, is the President abused the loyalty and the trust that voters had placed in him by perpetuating this noise. It was really one of the sadder things I’ve seen in my last forty years of politics.”

When Sara Haines followed up and asked Boehner if Republicans should be doing more to debunk Trump’s lies about the election, Boehner wrote the former President off in a casually scathing way.

“Here’s a guy who’s unemployed. He has nothing else to do but cause trouble. And clearly, it’s obvious to me that he’s not going to go away,” Boehner said.

“I think what Republicans need to do is act like Republicans. You know, 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 and those principles are pretty straight-forward and pretty simple,” Boehner said.

After this, Boehner was asked by Sunny Hostin about how he would have handled the Matt Gaetz scandal, and he said, “He’d have been in my office several times answering questions about his activities…I don’t know what the facts are, but if the facts are anywhere close to what’s been reported, I don’t think he’s going to be in Congress very long.”

Boehner’s memoir, On the House: A Washington Memoir will be released tomorrow.

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