GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger calls Trump 'an utter failure' after the former president said that the Capitol rioters posed 'zero threat'

Adam Kinzinger
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  • Rep. Adam Kinzinger blasted Trump for downplaying the threat of the Capitol insurrectionists.

  • Trump called into Laura Ingraham's Fox News show and lodged complaints about the election.

  • Kinzinger said that Trump's on-air statements were "quite honestly sick and disgusting."

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Related: Watch the implosion of Trump's failed casino in Atlantic City

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the most prominent Republican critics of former President Donald Trump's influence over the party, went after the former president again last week.

When Trump called into the Fox News host Laura Ingraham's nightly show, he continued to push 2020 election-related complaints, but Ingraham pivoted to the deadly January 6 Capitol riot, asking the former president if he's concerned that the US Capitol has become a "fortress" after attempted insurrection.

"I think it's disgraceful," he said. "It's a political maneuver that they're doing. It was zero threat, right from the start. Some of them went in, and they are hugging and kissing the police and the guards. They had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in and they walked out."

He added: "I'll tell you what. They're persecuting a lot of those people. Some things should happen to 'em ... but why aren't they going after Antifa?"

Read more: A Trump-appointed prosecutor blindsided the Biden DOJ with a '60 Minutes' interview on the Capitol riot cases. Now a federal judge wants to talk about it.

Kinzinger rebuked Trump's minimization of the riot, which included the death of US Capitol police office Brian D. Sicknick.

"He is an utter failure," he wrote on Twitter. "No remorse and no regret. It's quite honestly sick and disgusting."

Kinzinger, who has represented a Republican-leaning congressional district anchored in central and northern Illinois since 2013, has been criticized by his own family in two open letters disparaging him for his vote to impeach Trump earlier this year and for his vocal criticism of the former president.

In one of the letters, Kinzinger's relatives suggested that the congressman had committed "treason" as a member of the military for openly criticizing Trump and was working with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, whom they labeled a "witch/devil."

Trump was impeached by the House for "incitement of insurrection" for his role in the attack and 57 senators - including seven members of the president's own party - supported the conviction.

Since the Senate didn't meet a two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, to convict, Trump was acquitted of the charge.

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