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Boehner Calls Trump His “Buddy” and Cruz “Lucifer in the Flesh”
John Boehner, avatar of the loathed GOP establishment, took the stage at Stanford University Wednesday night to get a few things off his chest:
Much of the discussion — and laughs — focused on Boehner’s views on the current presidential candidates. Segueing into the topic, Kennedy asked Boehner to be frank given that the event was not being broadcasted, and the former Speaker responded in kind. When specifically asked his opinions on Ted Cruz, Boehner made a face, drawing laughter from the crowd.
“Lucifer in the flesh,” the former Speaker said. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
Boehner described other Republican candidates as friends. In particular, he said he has played golf with Donald Trump for years and that they were “texting buddies.”
…Later, he added that he had known Clinton for 25 years and finds her to be very accomplished and smart.
So, let’s get this straight: Hillary is accomplished and smart, while Ted Cruz is Beelzebub, Infernal Sovereign of the Netherworld. I shouldn’t be surprised that the former Speaker of the House is Trump’s buddy; not many Orange-Americans have made it so far in political circles.
Boehner for the most part accepted Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee, though he did express his surprise at the candidate’s success. While he did not praise Trump’s policies, the former Speaker did say he would vote for Trump in the general election if he becomes the Republican nominee. He said he would not, however, vote for Cruz.
Fellow establishment gadfly Peter King thought Boehner’s remarks were far too kind:
In an interview with CNN, the New York Republican congressman told Wolf Blitzer he agreed with the former House speaker, who called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” on Wednesday night.
“Maybe he gives Lucifer a bad name by comparing him to Ted Cruz,” King said.
Thankfully, there was one Republican elected official who was willing to defend Cruz, anti-establishment Sen. Mike Lee:
Published in General
Now that I think about this some more, hasn’t John Boehner typically had harsher criticism of the Tea Party movement than for Democrats?
Yep, you’d never hear him calling Nancy Pelosi a female canine.
Personal opinion. It happens to be shared by many. That’s all.
I judge people every day based on right brain impulses. We all do. I am not suspending that feature when choosing a candidate. That impulse has served me very well over the years.
But more importantly, it’s not rational to think that others will suspend the right brain impulse on Cruz. Some people just come off wrong. Cruz is one of them.
And here is Judd Greg saying much the same thing.
These people know something. It’s not just about upsetting the apple cart. You don’t get that level of hatred for upsetting apple carts. You get it for personal reasons.
No, and I also did not say that. I just said, in short (i) there are a lot of people who have worked with Cruz who have some pretty negative things to say about him, and we should listen instead of assuming its all about this anti-establishment narrative and (ii) I won’t vote for someone if my gut reaction is that negative.
Bill Bradley was a great guy. I would never have voted for him.
It’s not about substance. When my initial reaction to his character is really awful, and then I hear a lot of people I like telling me that they guy is a horrible human being, that’s enough. Where there is smoke there is fire.
It’s nothing like climate science. We are not talking about science here. We are talking about character. Right brain, not left.
What negative things do they have to say about him on his positions? Anything? Or is it all personality? This was my point – we are voting for a leader, not a buddy.
I guess that’s the consensus, but I actually find Ted Cruz likeable. I also found Dick Cheney to be lovable and think Quark was the most likable character on Deep Space Nine, so that shows how far out of the mainstream I am. I know Bill Clinton is supposed to be super charismatic, but I never saw the appeal.
They are saying negative things about his character. That’s monumental. It matters. For Trump as well as Cruz.
Character is way more important in a leader than policies. One changes, the other rarely does. Character fills in the gaps were policy inevitably fails to plan for.
So you thought Bush was a chimp-like moron and Reagan was an addled old man, because so many others thought so? Those people knew something, right?
Cruz is disliked by his colleges in the Senate exactly because he upset the apple cart. I consider their disdain a shining symbol of his character. A good evaluation of a man is based on who he has for enemies. Ted has all the right enemies.
when people of questionable character say negative things about someone else’s character, does that carry weight?
RFBF, I don’t find your reasoning valid. I have learned that some of the most interesting people I come into contact with are sometimes not ones that I like to begin with. For snap judgements what you are saying makes sense but you’ve had plenty of time to do more than compare your feelings with others. Like with Newt and Sarah Palin, their most vicious critics are good indicators that the true facts are not on the table.
I believe strongly that Newt’s character as perceived by most people is a caricature dreamed up by the left after he helped the Republicans get Congress. The Republicans I knew liked him a lot in 1994,5 but over time and to the exact extent that the character assassination was promulgated, they got trained to turn against him, even some learning to despise him.
I met Bill and Hillary about two years ago in Manhattan. I have to admit, even knowing everything I know now, I liked him. We shared a laugh.
Her? Ughh.
Yeah, except the more I hear from Cruz the more I dislike him. It’s not intended to be reasoning. It’s an impression. We all have them. We should be keeping our minds open on people for a while to be sure. But after a while, it’s fair to make a judgment.
Cruz crossed that threshold with me.
No. And that would actually contradict what I said. What I actually said was when I formulate my own opinion and then I hear others whom I think well of say things that reinforces that opinion, then I tend to think that opinion is valid.
I never thought those two things about Reagan or Bush.
Sure. You always need to look at the source. That said, I see no reason to believe that John Boehner or Judd Greg have questionable character. Or McCain or Graham. I may not agree with them on politics. But Judd Greg and John McCain especially are people whose careers exemplified a decent person.
I cannot ignore the fact that these are decent people who worked with Cruz and concluded he is not of good character. Combine that with my own personal impression that has been consistent over the years and I would be a fool to ignore the warning signs I see.
Then you are saying that you think well enough of Boehner and the Republicans in the senate who dislike Cruz that their dislike validates your existing negative impressions of him?
If that is the case, and you have such respect for Boehner and his character, then that makes sense to me. And if that is so, then you must also respect his endorsement of Trumps character?
In the same vein, my opinion of Boehner is the reason that his disdain for Cruz validates MY existing impression of Cruz as someone willing to make powerful enemies in pursuit of his principles and to fulfill his promises to his constituents. Things that I consider evidence of character.
Listen to the flagship podcast. Other than him being “miserable” and “worse than Lucifer,” what is wrong with his character?
It sounds like a personality issue to me.
“miserable S.O.B.” “Lucifer himself” “whacko bird” no one would convict you.
Nothing about Ted’s honesty, integrity, or anything having to do with character. All of these are barbs aimed at Ted’s substantive positions and reflect McCain, Graham, and Boehner’s hurt egos and personality issues with Cruz.
On what do these people you like base their opinions? On what actions? This is the problem here – you are forming an impression based on tone and Cruz’s unwillingness to sit down and shut up. You are not basing this opinion on anything having to do with Cruz’s integrity.
You get it for upsetting personal, corrupt apple carts. You get it for making Boehner, McConnell et al face up to the reality of what they really are.
John McCain is not a decent person. He was heroic back when he was in prison in Hanoi, but now he has become the opposite of the kind of person he was then. He consorts with the enemy, desires their pats on the head and extra scraps thrown through the prison bars, and rats out those on his own side.
Ted Cruz is now the hero that John McCain was back then, with the strength of character that John McCain had back then.
I believe that Ted Cruz knew he could not get Obamacare removed by shutting down the government. I believe that Ted Cruz knew that shutting down the government would harm many in his own party, and I believe that many in his own party told him that. I believe he did it all anyway because that’s how Ted Cruz was going to build himself up in order to run for president. I don’t think for a second that Ted Cruz actually thought that he was going to be successful in fulfilling his promises, and I think he lied to us all when he said he could. I think he knew that many conservatives, including apparently many on these forums, would be suckered into the ruse and associate Ted Cruz with principle. And as a result, we now have a scenario where Ted Cruz has zero chance of being President but those people he spun up are not spinning down. He lied about it all.
I believe that Ted Cruz was a-okay with amnesty and that his voting for the bill was not the “poison pill” excuse he made up later. There is no mention of any of this when he went to Princeton the week after the bill was voted on. He made up the lie later.
I believe that Ted Cruz knows exactly how to manipulate conservatives into thinking he is some sort of moral example. I think even the cadence of his speech is an attempt to manipulate conservatives.
And what we are seeing now is many in these forums who have re-aligned their moral code to make Ted Cruz always right. I believe that you all have been manipulated into believing that the character objections to Ted Cruz from those who have worked with him, from his school roommates to his senate colleagues, are because he is anti-establishment – an answer that is WAY too neat and tidy with what the answer needs to be to promote Ted Cruz.
I saw this the moment he came on the scene. And I have not seen anything yet to counter that. I saw it in Obama in 2008 and I see it in Cruz now.
I think you are all being taken for a ride.
Just listen to Judd Greg. He is not saying that Cruz is not his choice for President or that Cruz would make a bad president. He is saying that Ted Cruz shouldn’t be trusted with the responsibilities of the office of president. This isn’t some fight about establishment not establishment. These people are telling us that this guy is a first rate mental case.
I don’t know anything about Judd Greg, but I know about John Boehner and Peter T. King. I listen to them.
Cruz for President.
How was the Republican Party hurt by the shutdown?
Was Jeff Sessions a-okay with amnesty also? Or was Sessions voting for a poison pill that Cruz didn’t know about?
This is tough to take seriously from someone who seems enthusiastic about Trump. You may think Cruz temperamentally unsuited to the office, and Trump suited to it. I think the exact opposite.
I personally trust Mike Lee. I also trust Marco Rubio, who is hanging on to his delegates so Cruz can win. I happen to think you’re right about Cruz’s amnesty history, but amnesty and immigration are not my issues, and I think Cruz fudged the past because he needed to do so to beat Trump. And I think if this party is going to have any future at all, Trump must be defeated. I think Rubio and Cruz feel the same way.
Cruz is not, in my opinion, a pure idealist. He is, however, an extraordinarily brilliant man. And he is truly devoted to the Constitution. He may have varied in his positions, but he has never taken a position to the left of center as far as I know. He worked extremely successfully on behalf of conservative principles but with Democrats at the FTC.
Yes, he is ambitious. You don’t get where he is without ambition. But I think that as president he would use his position to advance principles that I hold dear and that would benefit our whole country, including those who right now think that Trump or Hillary would be their best option.
RFBF: This is pretty weak tea. Not convincing.
I am not enthusiastic about Trump at all. I have said many times I don’t particularly like him. I am enthusiastic about the potential of finally bringing the Trump voter into the Republican Party because I am convinced that we would continue to lose national elections if we kept running conservatives or traditional republicans who would turn them off.
I seem enthusiastic because this is the path back. If I have to swallow Trump, so be it. But Trump is what he is. He’s boorish and disrespectful and holds a lot of liberal positions. Fine, I get it. Not good stuff, and I disagree with 75% of what Trump says. But I believe that Trump cares deeply about this country. That is what is driving him.
But Cruz is a clinical narcissist taking everyone for a ride. He is dangerous. That is what these other people are saying. And I agree with almost everything Cruz says on the constitution and the role of government. Problem is, I don’t think he believes any of it. I believe Cruz believes deeply about Cruz, and that is what is driving him. And I believe that the reason people reject him is because they sense this, even if they cannot put their finger fully on it.
Do you remember Mona stating early objections to Cruz which she could not fully describe, and had difficulty expressing, but would defer to Jay as Jay defended him? I believe that Mona was catching this even if she couldn’t put her finger on it. But eventually, Mona came to defend him rather strongly as she substituted conservative analysis for her intuition. That is exactly the result Cruz is trying to create.
Cruz supporters always seem to have a ready justification on hand that spins everything as Cruz good, others bad. That is a massive red flag that something is deeply wrong. We should be more critical.
So in undergard, Cruz didn’t mean it. At Harvard Law? All a ruse. As a clerk to federal judges? Just more lies.
In the W. administration, campaign, and recount? A liar, a fraud.
Defending the constitution as solicitor general in TX? He fooled Greg Abbot good!
Then, Cruz’s biggest coup – the GOP Senate primary in 2012. Cruz completely fooled the voters and deprived them of being represented by David Dewhirst.
In the Senate, Cruz pretended to stand up against Obamacare, but he knew it was all a ruse.
Cruz’s whole life? A big lie. Judd Gregg told me, he knows.