Former House Speaker John Boehner was incredibly relaxed Wednesday night as he joked about his last name and called Ted Cruz a “miserable son of a bitch” and “Lucifer in the flesh.”
About his own name, Boehner told an audience at Stanford University: ““You can call me boner, beaner, jackass, happy to answer to almost anything.”
He also called himself a jackass.
“I think my proudest accomplishment is walking out of there the same jackass I was 25 years before,” he said.
A former GOP operative on Capitol Hill confirms that Boehner was always laid back about the “boner” aspect of his name. “He’s joked about his last name a lot,” the ex-aide said.. “And in meetings and walking around the Capitol, he would always joke around with staff and poke fun at one of his favorite targets — journalists — often about their clothing.”
This isn’t the first time that Boehner joked about his sometimes confusing surname.
In 2014, a Capitol Hill reporter accidentally called him “Mr. Camp” and quickly corrected himself. The reporter was referring to Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.).
“Boner, boner,” Boehner joked in response. (You can watch the video here.)
Boehner has had to put up with a lot of dick jokes. He’d go out of his mind if he took the whole thing too seriously.
In 2010, when he was becoming House Speaker, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel created a bit called “Get to know John Boehner (not Boner).” Kimmel joked, “It’s the reason his brother Dick stayed out of politics altogether.”
“I call him Boner because that’s how it looks to me: B-o-e-h-n-e-r,” insisted ABC “The View” co-host Joy Behar in 2010.