Former Notre Dame coach and ESPN commentator Lou Holtz has spent decades giving individuals pep talks, both on and off the football field. But the re-election of President Barack Obama caused the legendary coach to seek out someone else for inspiration: Speaker of the House John Boehner.
During an address to the Ripon Society on Tuesday, Boehner revealed that Holtz consulted him via text messages on Monday night following Obama’s inauguration.
“Last night, I got a three-page text from my good friend Lou Holtz, who must have watched the inaugural and then all that blabber on TV…: ‘I’m done, finished, the country’s over with — we’re not doing this again!,'” Boehner recounted.
The text was not the first time Holtz voiced pessimism about the president.
“Now, I had already had this conversation with Lou about nine or ten days after the election. He came in to speak to our 34 new members. And before he went over to talk to them, he came over to my office, and he was moaning and groaning,” Boehner said. “I said, ‘Lou, would you stop it? We’re Americans, we’ll figure this out!’ And I had to spend 15 minutes giving Lou Holtz a pep talk! I had to do it again last night!”
While the anecdote was lighthearted, Boehner went on to acknowledge that the next 20 months would be “a very difficult period for us.”
“While we want to stand up and fight for more fiscal responsibility, want to stand up and find a way to move tax reform that will help our economy grow, to do the things we believe in, we’re going to be doing it in an environment that is going to be far more hostile than anything that I think we’ve seen for a long, long time.”
In the same speech, the House speaker also warned that the Obama administration will attempt to “annihilate the Republican Party.”
“So we’re expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party. And let me just tell you, I do believe that is their goal – to just shove us into the dust bin of history.”