From John Boehner’s new book, On The House:
By 2011, the right-wing propaganda nuts had managed to turn Obama into a toxic brand for conservatives. When I was first elected to Congress, we didn’t have any propaganda organization for conservatives, except maybe a magazine or two like National Review.
The only people who used the internet were some geeks in Palo Alto. There was no Drudge Report. No Breitbart. No kooks on YouTube spreading dangerous nonsense like they did every day about Obama.
“He’s a secret Muslim!” “He hates America!” “He’s a communist!” And of course the truly nutty business about his birth certificate. People really had been brainwashed into believing Barack Obama was some Manchurian candidate planning to betray America.
Mark Levin was the first to go on the radio and spout off this crazy nonsense. It got him ratings, so eventually he dragged Hannity and Rush to Looneyville along with him. My longtime friend Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, was not immune to this. He got swept into the conspiracies and the paranoia and became an almost unrecognizable figure.
Read the full excerpt. It’s really something.
Former GOP @SpeakerBoehner book excerpt: “There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Senator Ted Cruz.”https://t.co/njyNAR0O70 via @politico
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) April 2, 2021
Boehner says Fox News made his life “a living hell…” He blasts talk radio conspiracists… He knocks places like Fox for “creating the wrong incentives…” He says Sean Hannity “was one of the worst…” https://t.co/x5wYRxG3fc
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 2, 2021
Boehner says Murdoch didn’t have a problem with “kooky conspiracy theories” if they were good for business. Boehner says he called Hannity a “nut.” And he points out that Fox made “people who used to be fringe characters into powerful media stars.” https://t.co/IqCAYIEKvg
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) April 2, 2021