John Boehner says Trump incited Capitol attack via 'bullshit he'd been shoveling since he lost a fair election'

• John Boehner in his new book said Trump sparked the Capitol riot via "bullshit he'd been shoveling."
• Boehner ripped into Trump over his false claims on the 2020 election.
• The former House Speaker said the GOP has been taken over by "garden-variety whack jobs."

Former Republican House Speaker John Boehner in his new book blamed former President Donald Trump for the deadly Capitol insurrection on January 6, per an excerpt obtained by The New York Times, stating that Trump's refusal to accept the election results caused "mob violence" on top of costing the GOP the Senate.

Trump "incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bullshit he'd been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November," Boehner wrote in "On the House: A Washington Memoir," which is slated for release on April 13.

By claiming voter fraud "without any evidence" and repeating those claims, Trump took "advantage of the trust placed in him by his supporters" and "ultimately" betrayed that trust, Boehner wrote.

Boehner said the Capitol attack was "scary, and sad" and "painful to watch," while admitting that he "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."

The former House Speaker said the Capitol riot was "one of the lowest points of American democracy" and "should have been a wake-up call for a return to Republican sanity." He called on the GOP to "take back control from the faction that had grown to include everyone from garden-variety whack jobs to insurrectionists."

In an excerpt of "On The House" published in Politico Magazine, Boehner was particularly critical of GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, referring to the Texas lawmaker as a "reckless asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else." Boehner said Cruz is leading a "chaos caucus" in the House without even being a member of the lower chamber.

Cruz was among the Republican senators who objected to certification of the election results on January 6, even after the violent insurrection. In an off-script moment during a recording of the audiobook of his forthcoming memoir, Boehner said, "PS, Ted Cruz, go f--- yourself."

Writing on lawmakers who aided and abetted Trump's electoral disinformation campaign and effort to overturn the result, Boehner said, "Some of the people involved did not surprise me in the least. The legislative terrorism that I'd witnessed as speaker had now encouraged actual terrorism."

The former president seemingly did not appreciate Boehner's commentary, though the ex-House Speaker was hardly the first prominent Republican to excoriate Trump over the events of January 6.

In an email to the Times, Trump asked of Boehner, "Was he drinking when he made this statement? Just another RINO who couldn't do the job!" Boehner, whose affinity for wine is well-known in Washington, once said that he wasn't interested in running for president because he doesn't want to give up smoking cigarettes and drinking.

Trump spokesperson Jason Miller in an emailed statement to the Times referred to Boehner as a "Swamp Creature."