Madison Cawthorn’s Removal From Congress Proposed By Kinzinger

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Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) evidently isn’t a fan of Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), the 26-year-old, first-term Congressman with an expansive list of scandals. Besides his connections to the Trump-inspired attack on the Capitol, Cawthorn was also caught speeding and driving with a revoked license (on separate occasions), claimed to have been invited to orgies and been witness to cocaine use among D.C. Republicans, insisted that “bloodshed” was inevitable if the imaginary rigging of U.S. elections continues, and more. Kinzinger said Cawthorn doesn’t belong in Congress.

Cawthorn’s connections to the Capitol riot include his participation in the large, outdoor rally in D.C. that immediately preceded the Capitol breach and his consistent spreading of lies about the integrity of the last presidential election — lies that drove the actions of the rioters. Cawthorn has predictably characterized revelations about his questionable behavior as some kind of political hit job, although if he hadn’t originally actually done some of these things, then they wouldn’t be so much of a problem, would they? One of his speeding incidents involved the then-Congressman going 24 mph above the speed limit — just ridiculous behavior. Kinzinger, meanwhile, remarked:

‘I just want to say to close out this evening: [Madison Cawthorn] does not belong in Congress, and is an embarrassment not just to his district, but to the country. Vote this clown out, America we can do better than these [disastrous] leaders.’

Kinzinger is not the first Republican in a prominent position to express opposition to the continuation of Cawthorn’s Congressional career. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has endorsed Republican state Sen. Chuck Edwards in his primary campaign against Cawthorn, and Edwards also has the support of the Republican leaders of North Carolina’s state House and Senate. Cawthorn has often seemed more interested in making a name for himself than supporting his constituents. In one particularly revealing example, Cawthorn was remarkably delayed in reacting to deadly floods in the area he’s representing. “Cawthorn’s first public comments on the matter were around 24 hours after the Pigeon River reached initial flood levels, followed by retweets of hours-old resources from other public organizations working on the crisis,” activist Callie Pruett wrote last August in a North Carolina publication called The Mountaineer.

Cawthorn, meanwhile, has also been caught with a gun at an airport — twice — and been ensnared in a potential insider trading scandal involving a cryptocurrency named after “Let’s Go Brandon,” the ridiculous anti-Biden phrase used by some Republicans as a stand-in for “Fuck Joe Biden” after the latter was unfortunately misheard as the former by a journalist at a NASCAR race. Referencing the cryptocurrency, Cawthorn wrote “Tomorrow we go to the moon!” on Instagram — a phrase used for increases in value of financial holdings — the day before NASCAR driver Brandon Brown announced a sponsorship deal involving the coin, which subsequently dramatically shot up in value. Did Cawthorn know about the sponsorship deal ahead of time? And separately — where do the scandals stop with this guy? What does he think he is — a character in a bad movie? He’s a Congressman.