Transcript: A Conversation with John Boehner, Former Speaker of the House

MR. KANE: Hello, I’m Paul Kane, congressional correspondent and columnist here at The Washington Post. My guest this morning is the 53rd speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner, who resigned in the fall of 2015 after a long tenure–almost 25 years–in the House of Representatives. Welcome to Washington Post Live, Speaker Boehner, and let’s get right to the questions.

MR. BOEHNER: Hey, Paul, it’s good to be with you.

MR. KANE: Hey, you’re–tell the audience you are in Marco Island, your retirement home, enjoying yourself. It’s a little bit overcast there, just like here in D.C.

MR. BOEHNER: A little overcast, a little windy, and pretty humid.

MR. KANE: All right. Listen, I’m going to start at the end, if you will. On the evening of September 24th, 2015, I got a text from a couple of friends who said, hey, meet us at Alberto’s. We’re having dinner. So, I jumped in an Uber, went over to Alberto’s. I don’t know if I ever told you this. And I got out. I looked–I looked at the street, and there were a couple of SUVs. And I was like, oh, man, Boehner’s here. So, I walked in, met my friends, got out the menu. And there it was, staring at me. Veal alla Boehner. So, listen, tell the audience first what is Veal alla Boehner, and what is so important about that night.

MR. BOEHNER: Well, Veal alla Boehner is basically Veal Milanese with a fried egg on top, or two, and eight or 10 anchovy filets. It’s a German dish, but the Italians actually make it better than the Germans. And I would always get it–order it there, and finally they put it on the menu. But September 24th, 2015, was the day the pope came to the Capitol. I had family in town, friends in town, and we were all upstairs in the private dining room having a big dinner. Simple as that.

MR. KANE: Yeah, but the big dinner also led you to a big decision. And you decided that night–right?–or was it the next morning when you woke up and went on your walk?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, after the pope left on the 24th, I got calls from senators, House members, Democrats, Republicans, staff. It might have been the happiest day I saw on Capitol Hill in the 25 years I was there. I was going to leave at the end of 2015. I was going to announce it in mid-November when–around my birthday, actually. But later on in the afternoon, I told my chief of staff, I said, you know what, I might just do this tomorrow. And I said I don’t think it’s going to get any better than it is today. And he said, why not. And so, I thought about that night. Next morning, I walked up to Starbucks and back with my boys, and then sat and read for about an hour, and walked up to Pete’s Diner on 2nd Street, thought about it. I was walking down 2nd Street past St. Peter’s Church on the House side, and thought, you know, I think today’s the day. And it was.

MR. KANE: It was. But it was also at a time when you were facing this just–it was almost five years of just this constant relentless siege from the Mark Meadows wing, the House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan, and these other figures who just kept giving you unending headache after headache after headache. How much did it upset you that it got portrayed and felt as if you were . You were leaving a couple of months earlier than usual, but you were leaving at a time in a sense of people were trying to push you out.

MR. BOEHNER: Well, listen. I didn’t mind those members giving me headaches every day. If it wasn’t them, it’d be somebody else, all right? So that was really never the issue. The fact that people in the press want to portray this that these guys pushed me out is pretty laughable, but I can understand how people could see it that way. But I’m here to tell you it had absolutely nothing to do with my decision. Actually, I was going to leave–I was going to leave at the end of 2014. I thought when I was first elected speaker–I thought, you know, if I’m lucky enough to do this job for four years, that’ll be long enough. I was never going to be one of those members who was going to hang around Congress, hang around Congress, not even–not sure even where they are. And so, I was–I was going to leave in my mid-60s. After Eric Cantor lost his primary election in 2014, I thought I had to stay an extra year. I think the mark of a good leader is having someone in place behind you that is capable of carrying the torch, of being a good leader. And at the time, I didn’t think Kevin McCarthy was quite there yet, so I wanted to spend an extra year doing everything I could to get Kevin ready to do my job. It didn’t turn out that way, a little step along the way. But I did stick around another year.

Listen, I–there’s nothing I regret about my 25 years in Congress. I enjoyed almost every day, even when the knuckleheads were driving me nuts.

MR. KANE: The knuckleheads. Now when you look back at the last 10, 12 years of the Republican Party, in the book you really portray it–and you even call the House of Representatives crazy town and that you were essentially mayor of crazy town–when you look back at this evolution of the Republican Party, is Donald Trump the cause or the effect of today’s Republican Party? Did those people who were the knuckleheads, did they set the stage and make Trump almost the logical outcome of what happened, or is it all on Trump and what he has done to the party?

MR. BOEHNER: No, Paul, I think you’re taking a too narrow view of this. Trump was a product of an increasingly dysfunctional political system. You know, over the last–let’s say 30 years–over the last 30 years, where we get our news, how we get our news, what the news is has changed dramatically. The American people are probably getting a hundred times, 200 times more news about their government and people in their government than they ever got 30 years ago. And all this information is tending to push and or pull people into one of two directions, either to the far right or the far left, leaving fewer and fewer people in the middle. And by the time we got to 2016, I would argue Donald Trump understood what was going on better than any other candidate for our nomination in 2016. He beat some really–frankly, some really good potential candidates, and frankly, did it rather handily. And I would argue he is a product of this–of this increasingly dysfunctional system.

MR. KANE: And the media ecosystem, particularly on the conversative side of things, you write about that in your book where you had conversations with Roger Ailes in which you were trying to get him to not put the knuckleheads on TV nearly as much, and it ended up with Roger Ailes talking about his own conspiracies.

MR. BOEHNER: Yeah.

MR. KANE: So, you think that the media–the media created those incentives?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, I wouldn’t–I wouldn’t call it the media. You’ve got talk radio. You’ve got cable TV, which is nothing more than 24-hour political channel. Then you have the internet, and then you’ve got every social media platform known to man that allows people to create their own persona and create more news, some of it true, some of it not true. I mean, it’s bizarre the stuff that’s out there.

MR. KANE: A lot of people don’t remember this about you. You get elected in 1990 in a very competitive primary in Southwestern Ohio. You come to Congress when the Republicans are in the minority, and you were an early generation of these rabblerousers. You were exposing corruption. And these were things that exposed Republican leaders and Democratic leaders. You and Doolittle, Nussle, Santorum, you exposed things at the House bank, the House post office, House restaurant. And people hated you. You were–weren’t you an earlier version of some of these knuckleheads?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, listen, I saw things that I thought were wrong, and I decided to stand up and expose it, along with some of my freshman Republican colleagues. There was a purpose in us exposing it, and that was to clean up the institution. The institution was a mess. As Charlie Rose, the then chairman of the House Administration Committee described it one day in the early 90s, he said we run this place like the last plantation in America. Well, let me tell you what. It was a mess. And so, cleaning up the institution became one of the–one of the early goals–more transparency, more openness. But there was–there was substance in what we were doing. Some of my colleagues in the knucklehead caucus, what they want is chaos–chaos and noise, which is about all they do.

MR. KANE: When you were–when you were that young rabblerouser, the early knucklehead caucus so to speak, there was no Fox News. Rush Limbaugh was just sort of starting to create some sort of national brand. In–if the roles were reversed and a young John Boehner was arriving in Congress today or two years ago, do you think you would–which path would you have followed? Would you have ended up in the knucklehead caucus being in the media, social media, creating your own brand, or would you have continued up into the leadership ranks?

MR. BOEHNER: Who knows. Only God knows the answer to that question. Now listen, I try to live by one of my Boehnerisms that I tried to teach my colleagues every day, and that’s this: If you do the right things for the right reasons, the right things will usually happen. Don’t worry about it.

MR. KANE: Okay.

MR. BOEHNER: And so, I just tried to do the right thing every day and I didn’t worry about it.

MR. KANE: When you first became Republican leader, when you folks were in the minority in 2007-2010, you came in after a period of some bad corruption and personal scandals that really tarnished the Republican brand. And you had something–you didn’t officially say it was a zero-tolerance policy, but you were pretty tough. Congressman Vito Fossella got caught with a DUI when he was driving home to see his family. It turned out this was his second family that his first family didn’t know about. Pretty soon thereafter, Mr. Fossella, with the encouragement of your leadership, no longer was in Congress. There was a guy named Chris Lee who on one of the Republican retreats was seeking out getaway romances with people who were not his wife. He pretty soon was out of Congress. Today you’ve got somebody like Matt Gaetz, who’s now under investigation for potential underage sex trafficking, and there doesn’t seem to be anything, any consequence that is happening to him. Could you–what would you advise Kevin McCarthy to do in this situation? And you’ve got Marjorie Taylor Greene and some others who were initially talking about, you know, an Anglo-Saxon focused caucus. Is there anything that a leader today can do to people who are causing troubles in the knucklehead caucus?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, governing today is difficult. And I think all the leaders have their hands full trying to govern the Congress and trying to find common ground with the other side. Listen, before I became the minority leader, there were a number of corruption issues, scandal issues that frankly had never been–people didn’t address them. The leaders didn’t address them, on both sides of the aisle. And I told my colleagues when I was running for minority leader that on behalf of the Congress and on behalf of the Republican Caucus, I wasn’t going to put up with that nonsense. And I didn’t. I’d bring these members in to the office and look them in the eye and determine what the truth was or try to determine what the truth was. And if I thought somebody was guilty of horrendous behavior, I told them. You’ve got one hour. One hour to go and bring your letter of resignation, or I’m going to go to the floor and move to expel you. When these members get in trouble, it tarnishes all the members of Congress. It’s frankly not fair to the members. And the quicker the leaders deal with it, the better off they are.

MR. KANE: Did you ever give that advice to Kevin McCarthy about how to handle these situations?

MR. BOEHNER: Oh, don’t worry. He saw me handle it many times. But you know, every one of these cases is different. You know, I don’t know all the details of this Matt Gaetz investigation. I mean, I’ve read some of the articles, but I don’t know what the details are. But I’d sit down with these members and I’d look them in the eye. Remember, Paul, I grew up in a bar, all right? I can smell BS a mile away. And you know, I can look these guys in the eye, and I knew whether they were telling me the truth or not, or I’d ask them this question: Is there anything else? Well, if that answer didn’t come out no, and come out quickly, then I knew it was time for them to go.

MR. KANE: All right. Listen, we have some questions from readers. There’s a great one from a woman named Susan who–here’s the question. Susan Wolfson from Pennsylvania wrote in really simple: Why didn’t you come forward sooner?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, listen, you know, I’m not into writing books. I’ve never written a book before. After I retired, I thought I’d write a book. I thought I had a pretty interesting life, pretty interesting–very interesting career. And I thought it’d be a good story for people to read. But you know, as I got started, I’ll say I had a false start, and then I kind of put it on the backburner and eventually got around to putting the book together and getting it published. And you know, it just happened to come out last week. It was no–there was no effort to delay it, no effort to move it forward. It just happened to happen next week–or happen last week.

MR. KANE: I guess there have been some critics who’ve said why didn’t you speak out sooner if this is the way you really felt about the state of the Republican Party. They feel like you should have said something that, you know, as a leader, even though you’re in retirement, you’re still a distinguished elder statesman of the party. Why not speak out sooner? And would you–

MR. BOEHNER: Hey, listen, the leaders have a hard enough time trying to–trying to handle their caucus and trying to govern. The last thing they need is some has-been, some Monday morning quarterback firing shots at them across the bow. That’s just not my style. But you know, as I tell my story in the book, you know, some of these things are going to come out. But it’s not my job to tell them what to do or what not to do. They’ve got a tough enough job as it is.

MR. KANE: All right. One of the things that really marked your almost five years as speaker was this continued search for the big deal. You were always in the mix with Obama trying to get a big fiscal deal. There were two or three different bites at that apple. There was a big immigration package that the Senate put together, John McCain and Marco Rubio linking arms with Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, that you never, never could quite bring to the floor of the House. And there was gun legislation that was very popular on background checks, and none of those things ever got done. Some of them were down into the five-year line, to use a football metaphor from your old Moeller High School days, and it just seemed to fall apart.

What do you regret the most of those? Given how everything turned out, if you could go back and do it over again, would you roll the dice on any of those, and even if it meant giving up your speakership a little earlier than you would have?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, I think the big deficit reduction package that President Obama and I worked very closely on in 2011 is clearly my biggest disappointment. We had–we had worked for six or eight weeks and had a solid package that would have really began to put America’s fiscal house in order, and then the president walked away from the deal. I tried to come back to it several times after that over the years.

But here’s the issue, Paul. We’re spending more than what we bring in. We’ve done it for about 60 of the last 65 years. You can’t do this in your home. No business in America can do it. And guess what? Your government can’t do it either. I mean, the money that we’re spending today is going to get paid back by our kids, our grandkids and our great-grandkids for God’s sake. And so, if you look at the biggest focus of my speakership, was trying to put our fiscal house in order.

Now we did reduce the deficit five years in a row, even though I was the Republican speaker, Barack Obama was president, and Harry Reid was the majority leader for most of that time. We made progress, just not as much progress as I would have .

But my second biggest disappointment was immigration. I told the president I want to get this done. Our immigration system is a mess from top to bottom. It hadn’t been overhauled in decades and decades. And the Senate sent a bill over. I had a bipartisan group of members working together going back to 07, 08, and this bipartisan group, I kept waiting for them. They were very close to having an agreement. I mean very close. And no sooner we just get ready to move, President Obama would do something on immigration to kind of set the whole field on fire again that prevented us from being able to bring it to the floor. And so, it was a big disappointment. I wish we’d had gotten it done. But–

MR. BOEHNER: But on immigration, sir, they had a Senate bill that got 68 votes. That’s a big vote in the Senate for a big bill with a lot of components, and you folks, you never even had anything that was being marked up in the Judiciary Committee. I mean, were you really ever that close to anything? I mean, was it–was it just–

MR. BOEHNER: Well, the Judiciary–the Judiciary Committee would not produce a bill, period. I tried. I tried. I tried. I can’t tell you how many meetings I had with the then chairman. They could not produce a bill.

MR. KANE: So, Mr. Goodlatte just couldn’t do it. He’s the–is–

MR. BOEHNER: Or wouldn’t–or wouldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

MR. KANE: Okay. Was Eric Cantor’s loss in the primary in 2014, was that the moment where he loses to a never before heard of David Brat who ran against Cantor as soft on immigration–was that the moment that any chance of immigration legislation ended because House Republicans would never support it?

MR. BOEHNER: I don’t think Eric’s loss in 2014 had anything to do with immigration. It may have moved a few votes, but I don’t think that–I don’t think it was the issue, and it did not deter me in the least.

MR. KANE: But you didn’t move anything for the next 15 months.

MR. BOEHNER: Paul, you know, we’ve got committees. The committees are supposed to produce bills. Sometimes if they’re unable to produce a bill, you know, you’ll see a bipartisan group. And I had some real hardliners in this bipartisan group trying to come together on immigration. And I mean we were very, very close. Yeah, it’s a disappointment, but didn’t get it done.

MR. KANE: Okay. In today’s members, folks who are still there, do you talk to many of them much? I mean, even if it’s just about golf or wine or–

MR. BOEHNER: Oh, I talk to members. They call me once in a while. I never call them. But they call me once in a while, either to shoot the breeze or seek some advice.

MR. KANE: Well, who are some of those who you still stay in touch with?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, I don’t think I’ll–I think I’ll protect the innocent here.

MR. KANE: All right. Our friends over–I think it was Playbook reporting–you’re going to help out Liz Cheney for her primary? You’re going to do a fundraiser for her?

MR. BOEHNER: I’ve supported Liz Cheney in the past. I continue to support Liz Cheney. I’m not familiar that I’m actually doing an event.

MR. KANE: Oh, okay. My bad. But you’re still supportive of her.

MR. BOEHNER: Of course.

MR. KANE: Do you think–what does–what does that say about the evolution of the Republican Party where a guy like Dick Cheney, who we in the media may have spent a lot of time sort of castigating at this hardline conservative, and now here she is a few terms into the House and she’s being attacked from the right flank, if that even is a flank anymore? She is somehow soft. Is that–what does that say?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, listen, I’m a conservative Republican, right? So is Liz Cheney. We’re just not crazy. And you know, people in the media want to talk about these people being on the right. They’re on–they’re in the crazy column, all right? It’s got nothing to do with being conservative. My God, I have one of the most conservative voting records in Congress before I became speaker and no longer cast my vote typically. And yet, here I was being referred to as the establishment, the centrist. I used to laugh my rear end off that people could call me a centrist squish, the establishment. But I guess when you’re the speaker of the House, you are the establishment.

MR. KANE: Fair. Did you–speaking of crazy, where were you on January 6th?

MR. BOEHNER: I was–I was at home, here at Marco Island. I don’t watch–I don’t watch much TV, but I got a text from one of my former–one of my staffers told me I should turn on the TV, and I did, and I watched it for about an hour. And I turned the TV off. Couldn’t take it anymore. I was angry, sad. I thought it was one of the most pathetic moments in American history.

MR. KANE: I mean, that even prompted you to rewrite some of your portions of your book, right?

MR. BOEHNER: It did. It did. I had to rewrite a few portions, add a few more statements, made clear that what led to that should–nobody should accept it, ever.

MR. KANE: Yeah. Did you–did you ever talk to–did you talk to Mitch McConnell about that after that day, any other senators?

MR. BOEHNER: No, no.

MR. KANE: No?

MR. BOEHNER: No.

MR. KANE: What did you–what did you make of McConnell’s positioning in all of that, where, at first, he seemed to send a signal that he was willing to consider convicting Trump? In the end he said it wasn’t necessary because Trump was out of office, but then delivered that scathing speech where he seems to have just really ticked off all sides of this fight, including Trump.

MR. BOEHNER: Yeah, well, you know, Mitch has got a tough job like all the other leaders do, and he’s in a difficult spot. And so, you know, frankly I like Mitch. I think he’s a great leader, and I’ve been very supportive of him. But I haven’t talked to him so–and I’m not going to criticize him because I don’t want to make his job harder.

MR. KANE: All right. Well, listen, a couple of senators who are long-time friends of your–Rob Portman and Roy Blunt–are both–have both decided to retire. We’re already seeing, you know, competitive primaries in those states, states that–including your original home, Ohio, states that should be Republican seats. And you’re already seeing this sort of rush to be the Trumpiest of the Trumpers in the two primaries. What do you–you know, first of all, in Ohio, do you–do you have a favorite that you would try to nudge into the race, and what do you worry about what happens to–I know you never really cared that much for the Senate, but if the Senate turns into the House, what’s left of Congress?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, if they got rid of the legislative filibuster in the Senate, the Senate would then look like the House, which I think would be a huge blow to American democracy. Listen, I understand these members. One–both Blunt and Portman are getting a little older. They’ve been running for office for quite a while. Who would want to run for office one more time in this environment? I get it. I wouldn’t do it. As I said yesterday, I’d rather set myself on fire than to put myself on the ballot. But, yeah, there’s going to be–there’s always a contest for these seats, and there’s going to be a vigorous contest. And there are going to be some Trumpers, there are going to be some Republicans. God knows what else shows up. Good luck.

MR. KANE: You know, there was a time in 2016 and 2017 what became this sort of retro thing, and there were young Republican staffers who would walk around wearing Reagan/Bush 84 t-shirts, and it was–it was both sort of kitschy and like a nod to the past, but also it was their way of trying to signal that they still believed in the Republican Party epitomized by Ronald Reagan and the Bush family. Is that–is that Republican Party dead? You said in your book–at the very end you said that you couldn’t get elected in today’s party, and you didn’t think Ronald Reagan could. Is that party dead? And if–

MR. BOEHNER: Well–no, it’s not dead. It’s just that Republicans needs to go back to the principles of what it means to be a Republican. This isn’t about personalities and cults. We’re a party of fiscal responsibility, a party of strong national defense. They can lay out the half a dozen Republican principles that would appeal to two-thirds of America and go talk about it. That’s the key to reviving the party and putting it back in power.

MR. KANE: Is there anyone that you see on the horizon who can do what you just outlined for the Republican Party heading into 2024?

MR. BOEHNER: Well, there’s a lot of candidates out there, and I’m sure there are several of them who can bridge the gap, if you will. And good luck to them. I don’t call them. Some of them call me. I’ll talk to them. But I’m not in the middle of this, as much as you all want to push me into the middle of it. Good luck.

MR. KANE: Oh, we always are going to try to push you into it, Speaker Boehner. Well, listen. I’ll have to meet you sometime for the Veal alla Boehner up at Alberto’s. Good luck with everything. That’s all the time we have this morning. Thanks for joining us.

Look, everybody, please tune in tomorrow at 1:20 p.m. My colleague Jonathan Capehart is interviewing Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as that state is reeling from another surge in COVID cases. Just remember you can always go to WashingtonPostLive.com to get the schedule of upcoming events and register for those. Anyway, thank you all very much. The book is great. Always great hearing from you, Speaker Boehner. Thanks for everything.

[End recorded session.]