Meghan McCain tried her best to tee up John Boehner for an attack on President Joe Biden on Monday. The former Republican House Speaker refused to take the bait.
“I’m worried we’re headed towards the most divided time in our nation,” McCain told Boehner, who was on The View to promote his spicy new memoir On the House. “President Biden has promised to usher in a new era of bipartisanship. So far he’s issued more than 50 executive orders and chosen to go it alone on issues like the stimulus. You said that President Obama never made reaching across the aisle a priority, is Biden continuing the tradition?”
Instead of playing into that narrative, Boehner immediately shut her down, saying, “Well, listen, Joe Biden’s a good guy.” He called Biden a “traditional Democrat” who is just trying to “hold his party together” amidst a “skirmish” between progressive and moderate factions.
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“He’s got a very difficult job in his party these days, he’s got a very difficult job as it is being president,” Boehner added. “But I’m hopeful that here in the coming weeks we’ll see President Biden reaching out. I worked with him for 30 years. I know this guy inside and out. There isn’t a thing in the world that Joe Biden and I couldn’t work out together. It wouldn’t be everything I wanted. It certainly wouldn’t be everything he wanted. But we could have found enough common ground to do some good things on behalf of the American people.”
The question, of course, is whether Biden will be able to find that type of “common ground” with the current Republican leadership that Boehner is far less hesitant to criticize in his new book.
Asked on Monday to elaborate on his disdain for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Boehner said, “Well, this guy was not even a member of the U.S. House. He’s a member of the Senate. He’s coming over to the House side of the Capitol, stirring up some of my knuckleheads and pushing them to do things that were about the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And he’s not even a member of our caucus!
“I’ve never quite seen anything happen before or since like the activities of Ted Cruz,” he added. “You know, I don’t really beat up too many people in this book, except one: Ted Cruz, Lucifer in the flesh.”
“Ooooh, yes!” Whoopi Goldberg replied enthusiastically.
