GOP Lawmaker Recalls Exact Moment He Realized His Party Was Capitulating To Trump
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said the GOP’s capitulation to Donald Trump finally became clear to him when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy visited the ex-president at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to talk strategy, just two weeks after he’d blamed Trump for his role in inciting the deadly U.S. Capitol riot.
McCarthy, a California Republican, “went to Mar-a-Lago and charged the paddles and brought Trump back to life,” Kinzinger recalled in an interview with The New York Times over the weekend.
“That’s the moment when I realized, ‘Oh man, this is a problem,’” said the lawmaker, who is now one of his party’s most outspoken critics of the former president. “You come to understand that when the party and party leaders talk about unity, and in the same breath say that Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, what they’re talking about isn’t unity.”
“They’re talking about capitulation,” he continued. “When, under the guise of unity, you act like Jan. 6 was just whatever you want to make of it, that is capitulating to a false narrative and to a dangerous attack on democracy. I will certainly talk to Kevin if he wants to, but I don’t see how we’re ever going to come eye to eye on this until there is a recognition that we can’t be the party of insurrection.”
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
