John Boehner reveals he voted for Trump in 2020

Former House Speaker John Boehner revealed that in the 2020 election, he voted for former President Donald Trump, whom he would later blast for inciting a "bloody insurrection."

Boehner has recently been promoting his new memoir On the House, and he told Time in an interview published Tuesday that he backed the former president for a second term last year, citing his Supreme Court picks and their agreement on policy issues.

"I voted for Donald Trump," Boehner said. "I thought that his policies, by and large, mirrored the policies that I believed in. I thought the choices for the Supreme Court were top notch. At the end of the day, who gets nominated to the federal courts is really the most important thing a president does."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The revelation came after Boehner didn't hold back against Trump in his book for his actions after the 2020 election, blasting the former president's "bulls---" election fraud claims and saying he "incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons." Boehner also recounted a time when his staffer was berated by Trump during a golf outing before he became president, with Boehner writing that the incident revealed Trump's "real anger" and adding, "we had no idea then what that anger would do to our country."

Boehner also told Time he views Trump as a "product of the chaos we've seen in our political process over the last 10 or 12 years." But when asked if he wishes in retrospect that he had done more to push back on Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Boehner said he didn't feel the need to do so.

"I'm retired," Boehner said. "I try to stay out of the day-to-day rumble of politics. I really didn't need to speak up."