John Boehner: I’d Rather Smoke and Drink Red Wine Than Be President

On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) stopped by NBC’s The Tonight Show to chat with host and reviled coup d’état leader Jay Leno. They discussed Chris Christie, Edward Snowden, Boehner’s occasional role as House “Gestapo,” and the GOP-led government shutdown. (“So I said, ‘You wanna fight this fight, I’ll go fight the fight with you.’ But it was a very predictable disaster. And so the sooner we got it over with, the better.”)

But the most interesting quote Boehner had to offer Leno’s audience was fluffier in nature. It came when the comedian asked the politician if he had any plans to run for president. His response:

I like to play golf. I like to cut my own grass. I do drink red wine. I smoke cigarettes and I’m not giving that up to be President of the United States.

Boehner definitely enjoys his red wine and cigarettes (two things you are allowed to consume as commander in chief, but whatever). President Obama gifted Boehner a $110 bottle of Tuscan red wine for his 63rd birthday, and Boehner received positive coverage from The Daily Beast for bringing the “booze back to Washington.” Boehner is a Camel Ultra Lights smoker, and prior to the smoking ban in the Speaker’s Lobby, he took smoking breaks there so frequently that one of the benches was dubbed the “Boehner bench.”

You can watch longer clips of his Tonight Show interview here.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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