- Former President Trump and Representative Adam Kinzinger have already clashed in 2016, reports The New York Times.
- In 2016, Trump asked a member of the RNC to deliver a vulgar message about what he should do with himself. ‘
- When he heard the message, Kinzinger apparently “laughed” and “invited Trump to do the same.”
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Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of former President Donald Trump’s most critical GOP critics, clashed with the former president until the 2016 election, reports The New York Times.
The Times said that ahead of the 2016 presidential election, the Republican National Committee of Illinois, Richard Porter, inquired about Kinzinger, who has and whether he has an opponent.
After Porter told Trump that Kinzinger did not have an opponent that year, Trump ‘stuck his finger in his chest and said he was sending a vulgar message to Mr. Kinzinger has to deliver on what he has to do with himself. ‘
The Times reports that when Porter told Kinzinger about his conversation around Election Day 2016, Kinzinger ‘laughed and Mr. Trump invited to do the same. ‘
Read more: IDP Representative Adam Kinzinger on acknowledging the QAnon threat and not fearing an IDP primary challenger to vote to accuse Trump
Kinzinger was one of the few sitting Republican politicians who did not support Trump’s presidency in 2016, and during his four years in office, and now in his post-presidency, continued to criticize the former president.
“I no longer see how I get at Donald Trump,” Kinzinger told CNN in an interview in August 2016, the Guardian reported at the time. “Donald Trump is starting to cross for me many red lines of the unforgivable in politics.”
Kinzinger was moved to publicly denounce Trump after the insults and attacks on the Khans, a Gold Star family who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 in support of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and in 2016 to CNN said: “I will not be silent. He can tweet anything he wants. I have to do it for my country and for my party.”
Kinzinger, who represents the securely conservative 16th District in Illinois, was one of only ten Republicans in the House who voted to accuse Trump on charges of inciting the January 6 uprising and one of 11 to vote for his GOP. colleague, rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia on February 4 of her committee allocations.
Trump was acquitted by the Senate in a trial that ended on February 13, with seven GOP senators joining all 50 Senate Democrats to plead guilty. The vote, 57-43, did not have the two-thirds majority that would be needed to convict Trump.
Kinzinger was also the first Republican from the House to demand that Trump be removed from office by the 25th Amendment or the indictment process the day after the January 6 uprising.
Kinzinger recently told Insider’s Anthony Fisher that while he realizes his actions have put him at risk for a primary challenge if he is to be re-elected in 2022, he wants to lead the IDP in a new direction.
“So we must fight like hell for the soul of [the Republican Party] and I’m willing to do that because I think that when history looks back at this moment, it will not be the people who voted not to confirm the election that will be written in history books, “he said.
He also started a new political action committee, Country First, which aims to support fellow anti-Trump Republicans like him who wants to take the party in a new direction.