Former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has been making the rounds peddling his new book, and doing his best to try to pretend that his party's problems started with the election of Donald Trump, rather than the fact that Trump is just a symptom and not the cause of the party's problems that we've seen grow steadily worse over the last few decades, with Trump just saying the quiet parts out loud that many of them preferred to keep behind closed doors.

CNN host Dana Bash opened her segment with Boehner by asking him about the 47 mass shootings in the United States in just over the last month, and polling that shows "the vast majorities of Americans support at least some new gun restrictions."

Bash brought up the 20 first-graders who were killed in Newtown while Boehner was Speaker, and whether he regretted not passing new gun laws then, and whether he wants to see "Republicans come to the table now at least to pass something."

Boehner responded by claiming that nothing was done then because Republicans "couldn't find common ground with the other side" and that "hopefully, there's some common ground to be found" now, and called it "heartbreaking" and "embarrassing our country to the rest of the world" that nothing is being done about the problem.

Bash followed up asking Boehner if "this would be a top priority for you were you -- if you were still speaker of the House." Boehner responded saying, "Well, yes, but I'm not."

Bash didn't bother to bring up the fact that Boehner, who was endorsed by the NRA, with an atrocious voting record when it comes to standing up to the gun manufacturers and the gun lobby, and who was listed in 2012 as one of the top 5 politicians in the pocket of the NRA, didn't exactly have a record of "bipartisanship" when it came to this issue when he had the power to do somthing about it.

As Amanda Marcotte at Salon discussed last week, Boehner doesn't deserve a rehabilitation tour. It would be nice if members of the media like Bash would quit giving him one.