John Boehner tells Cruz to ‘go f— yourself’ in unscripted audiobook asides: report

Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) took aim at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during the recording of his audio narration for an upcoming memoir, Axios reported Thursday evening.

During the audiobook recording for his new work “On The House: A Washington Memoir,” which features a white-haired Boehner holding a glass of wine in a smoke-filled room on the cover, sources familiar with the subject told Axios the former speaker went off script several times. 

Boehner, who resigned from Congress in 2015, at one point exclaimed: “Oh, and Ted Cruz, go f— yourself.” The context of Boehner’s remarks was not clear.

The Ohio Republican recently tweeted that he had been reading his book for the recording with “a glass of something nice” in-hand.

“You can blame the wine for the expletives,” the tweet continues. 

Poured myself a glass of something nice to read my audiobook. You can blame the wine for the expletives. #OnTheHouse #13Apr2021 pic.twitter.com/5uN709ipOs

— John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) February 25, 2021 

The Hill has reached out to Cruz’s office for comment.

The Texas senator has famously clashed with members of his own party, and in 2016 his fellow Republican senator, Lindsey Graham (S.C.), joked that “[i]f you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you” during an address to the Washington Press Club.

Boehner and Cruz have clashed personally in the past as well, with the former House leader remarking that same year that Cruz was “Lucifer in the flesh” and a “miserable son of a bitch” during an address at Stanford University.

“I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone,” Boehner said at the time, according to The Stanford Daily.

“But I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life,” he added.

The news from Axios comes as Cruz took heat last week for taking a vacation with his wife and daughters to Cancun while harsh winter weather battered his home state. 

The severe storm left millions in Texas without power, and dozens of people in the South died from hypothermia, weather-related car crashes and carbon monoxide poisonings. 

Upon arrival back to the U.S. following the backlash, Cruz said that the trip was a “mistake.”