Boehner

At Politico, Tim Alberta profiles former House Speaker John Boehner:

The funding of pet projects in lawmakers’ districts helped leadership to keep members in line, but fueled a culture of venality and waste; boondoggles like the “Bridge to Nowhere,” a 2005 project calling for a $223 million earmark to construct a bridge to a remote, sparsely populated Alaska island, became symbols of congressional excess. Boehner never accepted an earmark in Congress—and he enjoyed railing against those who did. His heckling once provoked Don Young, an Alaskan himself, to pin Boehner against a wall inside the House chamber and hold a 10-inch knife to his throat. Boehner says he stared Young in the eyes and said, “F--- you.” (Young says this account is “mostly true,” but notes that the two became good friends, with Boehner later serving as his best man.)

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“We’ve got some of the smartest people in America who serve in the Congress, and we’ve got some of the dumbest. We have some of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet, and some that are Nazis. Congress is nothing more than a slice of America.”
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“I never went to New York without seeing Ailes. He and I were friends. But it was the most bizarre meeting I’d ever had. He had black helicopters flying all around his head that morning. It was every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard, and I’m throwing cold water on all this bullshit.”
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He continues: “I always liked Rush [Limbaugh]. When I went to Palm Beach I would always meet with Rush and we’d go play golf. But you know, who was that right-wing guy, [Mark] Levin? He went really crazy right and got a big audience, and he dragged [Sean] Hannity to the dark side. He dragged Rush to the dark side. And these guys—I used to talk to them all the time. And suddenly they’re beating the living shit out of me.” Boehner, seated in his favorite recliner, lights another cigarette. “I had a conversation with Hannity, probably about the beginning of 2015. I called him and said, ‘Listen, you’re nuts.’ We had this really blunt conversation. Things were better for a few months, and then it got back to being the same-old, same-old. Because I wasn’t going to be a right-wing idiot.”