Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican Congressman from Illinois who infamously helped cultivate public opposition to Donald Trump’s lies about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, now says Trump should withdraw from the 2024 race. That’s after a new round of criminal charges against the former president, who is now federally accused apparently of obstruction and of violating the Espionage Act’s rules for handling sensitive government secrets.
The indictment itself isn’t available publicly, so a confirmed set of the specific details of Trump’s new charges, which reportedly number over half a dozen, isn’t quite available yet. “Trump should withdraw from the race in shame,” Kinzinger said in the meantime in a Thursday post quickly viewed nearly half a million times and counting. Elsewhere, another prominent Republican has actually recently said the same of Trump. That other Republican is Asa Hutchinson, a recently departed two-term governor of Arkansas who is now waging a long-shot campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
Like other Republican contenders who aren’t named DeSantis, Hutchinson generally lingers very low in polling of voters’ preferences in that Republican primary — though in theory, something connected to one of Trump’s now multiple criminal cases could make him essentially a nonstarter option! Hutchinson had called for Trump’s exit from the 2024 race actually before the latest charges against the ex-commander-in-chief were revealed in news reports and Trump’s own comments on Truth Social, which is his knock-off social media platform that emerged after Donald’s bans from mainstream sites over the Capitol riot.
“Donald Trump’s actions — from his willful disregard for the Constitution to his disrespect for the rule of law — should not define our nation or the Republican Party,” Hutchinson asserted after these charges were revealed.
It might be a little late for that turn, though. Hutchinson himself was actually replaced in office by a former official in the Trump administration, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and since Trump’s announcement of his expected 2024 campaign, many party leaders have generally supported him. He even received an endorsement from the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which is the Republican Party organization that handles Senate races.
