Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) choked up as he talked about the pain of being an outcast in his own party for the sake of being a father his son can be proud of.
Kinzinger joined host Neil Cavuto in a bit of Fox News resistance against Tucker Carlson’s dishonest whitewashing of the January 6th insurrection and his authoritarian pressure campaign for Republicans to do the same.
Instead of knocking the committee, Cavuto asked what it has found and what cooperation are they getting from former Trump officials, including former Vice President Mike Pence.
“We’re getting a lot of cooperation, actually,” Kinzinger said. “We’ve already spoken to over 300 people. Significantly the vice president’s former team has been quite cooperative.”
“We’re making some really good strides, and I think that every day that goes by, we’re going to learn more and more,” Kinzinger added.
Cavuto gave Kinzinger an opening to criticize House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Cavuto noted that Kinzinger has been been “really critical of Kevin McCarthy" and asked, "Could you explain?”
“It pains me because Kevin and I used to be friends,” Kinzinger said. He then relayed that he had warned McCarthy on January 1, 2021 that he feared there would be violence on the sixth “because when you convince people that an election was stolen, if you believe that, I mean, violence is a pretty logical outcome from that, and he just said, ‘Operator, next caller.’”
McCarthy also denied cover to “anybody that wanted to step out and say the truth,” Kinzinger said. “The truth matters, and we’re not telling people the truth.”
“From a political leader perspective, they began to fear their own base,” Kinzinger continued. “As leaders, yes, we need our base to elect us,” but “we have to lead people as well. It’s a responsibility.”
People “deserve” the truth, Kinzinger said. “They don’t deserve more and more emails trying to take their 20 or 30 dollars away for a Stop the Steal movement based in complete nothingness." Even worse, Republicans know they are lying: “I guarantee you, if you put truth serum into every Republican member of Congress all but one or two … would tell you that the election was legitimate, Joe Biden won and the election wasn’t stolen,” Kinzinger assered.
“Do you think he precipitated the attack on the Capitol?” Cavuto asked.
Kinzinger said the committee is still investigating that. “What we know is that for 180-some minutes, he watched television and watched the attack unfold,” Kinzinger said. “I can tell you, at a basic level, that’s abdicating your oath to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.”
Not surprisingly, Kinzinger said that despite the fact that Trump’s policies “excite" him he would never vote for him again.
Yes, it hurts to be pariah in a party he has been a member of and loved all his life, but, Kinzinger said he “would not change a thing” he has done in the last year. His voice choked up as he spoke about the imminent birth of a son. “I know that he’ll be proud of me someday and I know that he’ll be able to look and say that I stood up in a tough time.”
You can watch it below, from the January 6, 2022 Your World.
