1/6 Committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) made the big lie a question of mental capability, which is a clever way of seeing if Trump will admit that he lost.
Video:
Transcript via CBS’s Face The Nation:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
JOHN DICKERSON: Let me ask you about one of the findings on Thursday evening, one of the things we were shown for the first time is several people close to the president telling him there was no widespread fraud, he was going to lose, that’s what the numbers showed. How many people do you think in his- close to him were sending him that message?
REP. KINZINGER: Well, I look, we’re gonna get more into that. But let me just say this, I don’t really know many people around him that truly believed the election was stolen and told him so–
JOHN DICKERSON: Do you–
REP. KINZINGER: –He had a lot of people- He had a lot of people that told him it wasn’t.
JOHN DICKERSON: Do- were there people who knew it was a lie and yet carried on in his inner circle?
REP. KINZINGER: Oh, for sure. I mean, look, all you have to do is look at- he was surrounded by yes, people that want to come and tell him everything that pleases Him. You know, and we’ll get more into that. I don’t want to really kind of spoil the deep dive into some of this stuff. But look, I think if anybody truly believed after, you know, the- after what you see, after what the attorney general says, for instance, after what every piece of information comes in, if you truly believe the election was stolen then, if the president truly believed that, for instance, he’s not mentally capable to be president. I think he didn’t believe it. I think the people around him didn’t believe it. This was all about keeping power against the will of the American people.Â
Kinzinger was suggesting that only a person with limited mental capacity could really believe that the election was stolen. It was a clever point to make because one of the many things that set Trump off are questions about his intelligence.
Rep. Kinzinger like most Republicans knows how to get Trump to lose control. Trump has a history of blurting things out, Kinzinger seems to have given it a shot to see if Trump will incriminate himself.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
