Speaking to USA Today, former House Speaker John Boehner (R) said former President Donald Trump “abused” his loyalists, including after January 6, the day a mob of his supporters, spurred by his lies about the 2020 general election, stormed the United States Capitol in a bid to overturn the results. The attack resulted in five deaths, including that of a Capitol Police Officer who later died of his injuries.
“I don’t think it was just about him showing up at a rally on Jan. 6th,” he said. “The comments that were made all summer about the election was going to be stolen from him, all the follow-up noise that occurred after the election – I kept looking for the facts.”
“What struck me, especially after the election, was here’s all these people loyal to Donald Trump, and he abused them. He stepped all over their loyalty to him by continuing to say things that just weren’t true,” he added.
Boehner said he was “disgusted” by the attack.
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“I couldn’t stand it, to watch anymore,” he said. “Awful. I mean, it’s incomprehensible for me to believe this really happened.”
Boehner’s interview came as he continues to promote his book On the House: A Washington Memoir, about his career in Congress.
In the book, Boehner goes on to write that Trump “incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bulls*** he’d been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November,†noting that Trump’s refusal to accept that he’d lost the election to President Joe Biden “not only cost Republicans the Senate but led to mob violence.â€
“I’ll admit I wasn’t prepared for what came after the election — Trump refusing to accept the results and stoking the flames of conspiracy that turned into violence in the seat of our democracy, the building over which I once presided,†Boehner wrote.
Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.
