Former House Speaker John Boehner says he voted for Trump in 2020, but also strongly criticizes him

Former Speaker of the House John Boehner says that during the 2020 presidential election contest he cast his vote for Donald Trump.

Boehner, who served as a GOP congressman in the House for over two decades, told TIME that he liked Trump's Supreme Court nominees.

"I voted for Donald Trump. I thought that his policies, by and large, mirrored the policies that I believed in. I thought the choices for the Supreme Court were top notch. At the end of the day, who gets nominated to the federal courts is really the most important thing a President does," Boehner said, according to the outlet.

TIME asked the former legislator: "Given the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, do you wish you'd been more involved in pushing back against former President Trump's efforts to overturn the election?"

"No. I'm retired. I try to stay out of the day-to-day rumble of politics. I really didn't need to speak up," Boehner responded. "At some point [in 2018], somebody asked me about the state of the Republican Party, and I said, 'The Republican Party's taking a nap.' I wrote to my staff several days after January 6, I said, 'I called it a nap but now it's become'… I might have said 'crisis.'"

A January 7 tweet on Boehner's account stated: "I once said the party of Lincoln and Reagan is off taking a nap. The nap has become a nightmare for our nation. The GOP must awaken. The invasion of our Capitol by a mob, incited by lies from some entrusted with power, is a disgrace to all who sacrificed to build our Republic."
 

Boehner during an interview on Monday's episode of The View said that Trump "abused the loyalty and the trust that voters had placed in him by perpetuating this noise."

The former congressman's book "On the House: A Washington Memoir" was scheduled for release today.