During a new appearance on CNN, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) — one of the 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of impeaching Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection after the Capitol riot — went after a rally that the former president held in Ohio over the weekend, characterizing the event as a “rally of a loser president.” It’s true — Donald Trump, of course, lost last year’s presidential election, and despite that resounding defeat, Republicans throughout the party have continued to exalt him as a leader. Kinzinger added that attendees at the weekend Trump event opted to “in essence ogle at and in many cases just sort of worship a loser.”
As he pointedly put it:
‘It was a rally of a loser president. I mean, he’s the first president to lose reelection in decades. I don’t know why these folks would go there and in essence ogle at and in many cases just sort of worship a loser… He went off into old, recycled talking points. But the problem is… people believe this, they really do, and there’s enough people, frighteningly, that believe he’s going to be president in August.’
Kinzinger also spoke more broadly about the continued refusal by prominent Republicans to go against Trump’s lies about the integrity of last year’s presidential election, which he has claimed was somehow rigged for Joe Biden. Trump reiterated this lie at his public appearance in Ohio, claiming to the crowd that “we won the election twice,” and he’s pushed the same nonsense via an array of other means. Troublingly, Trump has also reportedly begun harboring the bonkers idea that he will be or at least could be reinstated as president by August of this year because of supposedly imminent revelations about (imaginary) election fraud.
As Kinzinger put it, discussing his fellow Republicans:
‘When you’re elected as a leader, it’s exactly that: You have to lead. I mean, yes we need to know what our constituents think, what they want us to do, how do we advocate for our district, but if nobody is taking the role of leader and leading people a certain way, telling them the truth when the Republic is at risk, which it truly is right now — then you can’t expect anything but what you saw [at the Trump rally], which is thousands of people that believe the election was stolen, because they don’t hear people telling them otherwise.’
Watch Kinzinger’s remarks below:
