During a phone interview on CNN’s “The Lead With Jake Tapper” on Friday, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) suggested that for many of his Republican colleagues, reelection has become more important than saving the country, adding they are afraid of standing up for what is right because they may lose.
Tapper asked Kinzinger to comment on what his Republican colleagues tell him privately about January 6, pointing out that “they don’t seem to care and don’t seem interested in any sort of information being forced from Steve Bannon,” despite the fact that “their lives were threatened that day by a mob of incited by Donald Trump” in an effort to stop the counting of electoral votes.
“They tell me they’re in a district that they can’t do that,” Kinzinger said about their fear of speaking out against Trump. “But what I tell them is like, like everybody has when you run for Congress and not a single person that runs for Congress, not having some kind of a moral redline. Without that, you know, no person runs thinking, you know, I’m never going to take a tough vote if it can save the country.”
Kinzinger went on to say that somehow being reelected has become the most important thing for them before adding: “This is the moment this right here is the moment where if we don’t stand up and get answers, we’re gonna see the country change in a very dark way. It will be totally foreseeable,” he concluded.
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Asked about Bannon’s indictment, Kinzinger said: “I think it’s clear there are a lot of people who can’t afford high-priced attorneys to try to litigate their way through this. All we’re asking for testimony, you know, we’re just asking for answers. So I certainly think this will have a chilling effect in terms of anybody that’s been trying to resist, and I certainly hope we don’t have to keep repeating this we just want answers. That’s it, and it’s a pretty simple request.”
