POLITICUSUSA
1/6 Committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said that the committee knows some things about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Video:
Transcript via CBS’s Face The Nation:
MARGARET BRENNAN: A lawyer for Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said this week she was not a participant in the January 6th violence. She was a victim. There were text messages revealed this week in which she was discussing martial law with Mark Meadows, then chief of staff. Do you need to ask her a few questions?
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) called out Kevin McCarthy, GOP Putin sympathizers, and Republicans acting like children.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger suggested during an interview that it was important for the 1/6 Committee to name those who are sympathetic to Putin.
Retiring Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) admitted that his biggest regret while serving in Congress was not voting to impeach Trump the first time.
The RNC officially censured Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger by voice vote with no discussion for investigating the 1/6 attack.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) was the only Republican in the House who voted to keep the U.S. from defaulting.
Representatives Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) are the only two Republicans to back censuring Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and are expected to vote for a resolution today that would take away his committee seats for posting an animated video that showed him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and attacking President Joe Biden.
Republicans are scary, indeed. But the moderates and mainstream media members who aid and abet them, living in denial, are just as scary, if not scarier.
Speaking on CNN, Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said that the Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan set the ongoing evacuation process “up to fail.”
“Let’s keep in mind, [former Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo met with the Taliban. As Donald Trump was publicly saying, ‘We have to get out of Afghanistan at all costs. It’s not worth it,’ Mike Pompeo meets with the Taliban and tries to negotiate something,” Kinzinger said on “State of the Union.” “They set this up to fail. But always, of course, Joe Biden could have easily turned this around, and instead used it as the excuse to get out.”
Kinzinger said that “both parties have failed the American people and it can’t continue. And it particularly can’t continue with just pointing fingers while America is embarrassed in front of the world.”
You can hear Kinzinger’s remarks in the video below.
.@RepKinzinger (R-IL) calls Republican "fear-mongering" about Afghan refugees "non-American."
Kinzinger to Republicans who do this: "a) you are either evil at your heart yourself or b) you're charlatan who's only interested in winning an election…" pic.twitter.com/HRhBCcdoOa
Back in 2016, the GOP ceded the Republican party to Donald Trump and they have never gotten it back. As a result, the new faces of the party are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.
A tiny percentage of Republican lawmakers have tried to push back against the Trump takeover. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney are two of those members. Both are sitting on the 1/6 panel studying the insurrection.
Kinzinger and Cheney are also facing huge blowback from their party. Earlier this week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called the duo “Pelosi Republicans.” And Lauren Boebert is now calling for the two members to be banned from the Republican cloakroom.
The freshman Colorado Rep. told reporters:
“These members should not be allowed in our closed door private meetings or even the Republican cloakroom. We had important meetings yesterday in the cloakroom. I saw Kinzinger in there. Why is he able to be part of those conversations while he goes back and confers with the opposition. Both of these politicians, Kinzinger and Cheney, have worked more with Pelosi than they have with myself, my colleagues or even [minority] leader McCarthy.”
Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) responded to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s (R-Calif.) threat to strip Republicans who accept an offer from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to serve on a commission investigating the insurrection of January 6 with four simple words: “Who gives a shit?”
The House voted largely on party lines to create the commission, with only two representatives, Kinzinger and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), voting in favor of its formation. McCarthy has decried the commission’s creation as a partisan exercise.
The committee will have eight members appointed by Pelosi and five appointed by McCarthy following a “consultation.”
Earlier this week, Pelosi confirmed that she has the authority to veto any of McCarthy’s picks, though she stopped short of confirming whether she will allow any Republican who voted not to certify President Joe Biden‘s Electoral College win on the panel.
Kinzinger, for his part, would not comment on whether he’d serve on the commission, telling reporters that
“we’ll see how this whole thing shakes out.”
Donald Trump spends most of his time at his Florida and New Jersey golf courses. This enables him to shield himself from criticism and constantly be surrounded by yes men and women.
This weekend, Trump stepped out of his comfort zone for the first time. Still, he picked an Ohio town where he would be treated like a deity. Recapping the speech last night, GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger ripped into the former president.
The Illinois congressman told CNN‘s Pamela Brown, “There are a lot of people that I’ve talked to that are mad at me for just telling the truth, which used to be a pretty basic low bar. That really truly believes that Donald Trump was elected president again. What you saw yesterday was a recycling of all his old talking points. It was a rally of a loser president. He’s the first president to lose re-election in decades. And I don’t know why these folks would go there and just short of worship a loser. They did.”
Kinzinger continued:
“The interesting thing is he didn’t talk much about the candidate running against Anthony Gonzalez, who is a fantastic person, Anthony is. The guy running against him, at one point, Trump made it sound like he negotiated world peace in North Korea. The guy worked advance, which is really an entry-level position, not to put it down, but not negotiating with world leaders. And then he went into old recycled talking points. The problem is people believe this. They really do. And there are enough people that, frighteningly, believe he’ll be president again in August.”
Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) did not mince words on the subject of Representative Matt Gaetz, who sparked significant controversy after he gave a speech urging Americans to use their Second Amendment rights.
“Four months after an insurrection at the Capitol, we’re hearing this language at another rally where so-called ‘leaders’ are stoking fears & anger and inciting violence,” Kinzinger tweeted in response to a clip of Gaetz’s speech in Georgia during a stop on his “America First” tour.
This is why we need a January 6 commission. Four months after an insurrection at the Capitol, we’re hearing this language at another rally where so-called “leaders” are stoking fears & anger and inciting violence. https://t.co/DEaKjKR9ph
Donald Trump brought a lot of new people into the Republican party. Despite losing the 2020 election, he still received the second most votes in American history.
At the same time, many have left the party because of Trump. And that includes a number of former campaign strategists. On Wednesday Nicolle Wallace talked to some of those strategists about how the GOP should move forward.
Tim Miller told the host, “People who want their political careers to keep going are willing to lie for him. Some of these are working in politics, not just voters, but voters are part of a cult now. The cognitive dissonance doesn’t really matter now any more than the cognitive dissonance of what David Koresh was telling his followers what mattered to them. “
Matthew Dowd took it a step further. “First, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, all who have spoken out need to leave their caucus,” he said,. “By staying in their caucus, all they are doing is enabling the fact that the people who committed the big lie will hold power in 2022. Yeah, it’s fine to say, ‘I have a big problem with this,’ but leave the caucus. You have to leave the cult in order to disempower the cult.”
Former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd calls on Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney need to leave the Republican party. pic.twitter.com/Rs8Q3k9aoN
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) May 27, 2021
Marjorie Taylor Greene seems to step in a different controversy each week. But the last week has been particularly galling for the Georgia Republican. After being roundly criticized for comparing mask wearing to the Holocaust, she doubled down on those comments on Tuesday.
And Greene has left Republicans in a tight spot. Early on in her career, she was stripped of her committee assignments. At this point, there are few ways to punish her. But Adam Kinzinger, a Republican colleague, has some ideas.
The Illinois Rep. told Politico:
“You can’t stop somebody from calling themselves a Republican. What we can do as a party is take a stand and say you don’t belong in our conference. That’s what I think we should do. I think we should kick her out of the conference, prevent her from coming to conference meetings, benefiting from conference materials.”
Adam Kinzinger should be everything Republicans are looking for in a future leader of their party. He is younger than most Reps and has won 6 straight election in deep blue Illinois.
But Kinzinger has been willing to stand up to Donald Trump and that has made him somewhat of a pariah in the GOP. At least one prominent Republican, though, is willing to have his back. Paul Ryan, formerly a vice presidential candidate and House Speaker will appear at a fundraiser for the Illinois lawmaker.
Trump and Ryan have been at each other’s throats for years. Ryan said of the former president in 2019, “
We’ve gotten so numbed by it all. Not in government, but where we live our lives, we have a responsibility to try and rebuild. Don’t call a woman a ‘horse face.’ Don’t cheat on your wife. Don’t cheat on anything. Be a good person. Set a good example.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Republican congresspeople got the chance to again issue judgement on Donald Trump. Earlier this year, only 10 GOP house members voted to impeach Donald Trump. This time around, they were voting on whether or not there would be a commission to look into the lead up to the January 6th insurrection.
35 Republican congresspeople decided to vote for the inquiry. 175 decided to back the former president. When asked about the vote, GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger said that many of his colleagues still live in fear of Donald Trump.
Kinzinger praised the members who voted for a commission, saying, “I think it’s an easy vote. We need answers. We need to take ownership of what was done, what led to it. This was an attack on our democracy and an attack on the number 2, 3, 4 person in line of secession for the presidency. It was the right vote. I’m pleased by the number of my colleagues that voted so far. I wish it was significantly higher. But I think, given all of the people that came out against it, it’s a positive number.”
Adam Kinzinger told Wolf Blitzer that his GOP colleagues are still scared of Trump tweets even though he doesn't have access to Twitter anymore. pic.twitter.com/oFdSaIZJL1
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa)
May 20, 2021
Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) criticized Republicans who have attempted to rewrite the history of the January 6 storming of the United States Capitol, likening the gaslighting of the event to something “out of North Korea.”
“When I saw my colleagues speak, you know, it feels like it’s in a 1984 — something you see out of North Korea, where it’s like ‘we’re just going to state whatever we want the reality to be,” Kinzinger told co-host Sunny Hostin, who asked him for his reaction to bodycam footage showing rioters attacking Capitol Police officer Michael Fanone.
“I was there on Jan. 6. This was a real insurrection. This was an insurrection of people that thought they were doing Trump’s bidding at the behest of Trump. Not just on that day but in the days leading up to that, with the narrative of a stolen election,” he added.
Kinzinger called on members of his party to be accountable for the insurrection.
“Jan. 6 was real and as a party, we have to take ownership of that, recognize what led to that, so that we don’t do that again. This isn’t 10 years ago, this was four months ago. So the idea of ‘oh let’s just move on,’ I agree let’s move on after we take a full accounting of how we got here and how never to get to this position again,” he said.
“This was a real insurrection.”
Rep. Kinzinger on Rep. Clyde comparing mob storming the Capitol to “normal tourist visit”: “The idea of ‘let’s just move on,’ I agree — let’s move on after we take a full accounting of how we got here and how never to get to this position again.” pic.twitter.com/rdBqrn1mas
Writing on Twitter, Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) says he warned House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that his support for efforts by conservatives to challenge the results of the 2020 general election would lead to violence, but that McCarthy ignored and brushed aside his concerns.
“A few days before Jan 6, our GOP members had a conference call. I told Kevin that his words and our party’s actions would lead to violence on January 6th,” Kinzinger wrote. “Kevin dismissively responded with ‘ok Adam, operator next question.’ And we got violence.”
A few days before Jan 6, our GOP members had a conference call. I told Kevin that his words and our party’s actions would lead to violence on January 6th. Kevin dismissively responded with “ok Adam, operator next question.” And we got violence.
Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and his team have raised $2.2 million in the first quarter of 2021. The amount is split evenly between the congressman’s re-election fund and an anti-Trump PAC he formed earlier this year.
Kinzinger, who is bound to face several opponents eager to unseat him following his vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection against
Congress