Cruz on Boehner: ‘I wear with pride his drunken, bloviated scorn’

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Friday bashed former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for what he called “drunken, bloviated scorn” in the latest tit for tat between the two GOP figures.

Cruz in a tweet responded to a clip from a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview scheduled to air this weekend in which Boehner said of Cruz, “I don’t beat anybody up, it’s not really my style, except for that jerk.”

“Perfect symbol, you know, of getting elected, making a lot of noise, draw a lot of attention to yourself, raise a lot of money, which means you’re gonna go make more noise, raise more money,” Boehner said in the interview. 

“It’s really, it’s unfortunate,” he added to CBS’s John Dickerson.

Cruz shared the clip, writing, “The Swamp is unhappy. I wear with pride his drunken, bloviated scorn.”

“Please don’t cry,” the Texas senator added, referencing multiple instances from Boehner’s tenure in which the former Speaker became emotional in public. 

The Swamp is unhappy.

I wear with pride his drunken, bloviated scorn.

Please don’t cry. https://t.co/c90Ve2EOGq

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 9, 2021

Cruz had previously hit back at Boehner in February after Axios reported that the former GOP leader in the audio recording of his book, “On The House: A Washington Memoir,” went off-script multiple times and at one point told Cruz to “go f— yourself.” 

Boehner had tweeted a picture of himself holding a glass of wine while recording the book, writing, “Poured myself a glass of something nice to read my audiobook. You can blame the wine for the expletives.”

Cruz addressed the incident during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla.

“You know yesterday, John Boehner made some news. He suggested that I do something that was anatomically impossible,” Cruz said at the time. “To which my response was, ‘Who’s John Boehner?’”

Boehner has levied several attacks against fellow Republicans and former colleagues in his book, which is scheduled for a Tuesday release. In the CBS clip released Friday, Boehner called both Cruz and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan (R) “political terrorists.” 

Boehner said of Jordan, a founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart and never building anything, never putting anything together.” 

Others have pushed back on Boehner’s remarks made in his book, including Fox News host Sean Hannity. 

In an essay adapted from Boehner’s memoir, published last week in Politico Magazine, Boehner recounted how relations between the two men broke down.

“We used to have a good relationship,” Boehner wrote about Hannity. “But then he decided he felt like busting my ass every night on his show. So one day, in January of 2015, I finally called him and asked: ‘What the hell?’ I wanted to know why he kept bashing House Republicans when we were actually trying to stand up to Obama.”

Hannity responded on Twitter by calling Boehner “one of the worst Republican Speakers in history,” as well as “weak” and “timid.”