- Adam Kinzinger insists he is still a Republican after repeatedly breaking with the GOP
- Said he would vote for Joe Biden in 2024 if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee
- Kinzinger was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump — he also served on the Select Committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol riot
Adam Kinzinger, once a Republican congressman, says he would vote for Joe Biden in 2024 because voting for Donald Trump is a vote for “authoritarianism.”
Discussing his new book Renegade, he also revealed that one of his family members disowned him after he “lost the trust of Fox News” and voted to impeach Trump following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Kinzinger, who did not run for re-election in 2022 because of his seat representing a district in Illinois, was one of two Republicans on the House Select Committee investigating the post-2020 attack on the Capitol. He was joined by former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who faced a 2022 primary and lost her at-large House seat for Wyoming.
“Do you still consider yourself a Republican?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Kinzinger during a Monday interview.
“It’s a difficult question,” the former lawmaker replied.
‘I do that,’ he admitted, ‘only in that sense, because I don’t want to give up that fight. And this country needs two healthy parties: a healthy Democratic Party and a healthy Republican. So I’m not going to give up that title.’
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger insists he’s still a Republican after breaking with his party on several issues — and says he would vote for Joe Biden in 2024 if former President Donald Trump is the Republican nominee
Upon leaving Congress in January 2023, Kinzinger joined CNN as a senior political commentator.
He told Cooper on Monday that he had received a letter from a family member disowning him after Fox News host Sean Hannity spoke out against him.
“So I had family who sent a certified letter disowning me,” Kinzinger said. “They said I lost the trust of big guys like Sean Hannity, which is funny, but they believe that. They said I was a member of the devil’s army.’
He added: ‘You know, we had people calling and threatening to kill my – at the time – five-month-old child, or saying they wished he would die.’
Kinzinger was one of 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted to impeach Trump over his alleged toll during the Jan. 6 riot, alleging incitement of insurrection.
While still staying true to his Republican label, Kinzinger said he would vote for Biden in 2024 if Trump were the Republican nominee again, which seems increasingly likely and the primaries continue.
“I see that if he is re-elected, it will not be a slide, but a sprint (toward authoritarianism),” Kinzinger said.
‘Because on January 6 we saw the guardrails of democracy being maintained. The car hit the rails. It kept you on the road. That rail can’t take two hits,” he reasoned.
‘And now they know what they’re doing. Now they know where the tricks are in the system.’