Representative Adam Kinzinger (R., Il.) launched a new PAC on Sunday aimed at loosening former President Trump’s hold on the Republican party.
Kinzinger, a former pilot in the U.S. Air Force first elected in 2010, was one of ten Republican House members to vote in favor of impeaching former President Trump in mid-January. The vote came after Trump incited a mob of his supporters to amass at the Capitol, leading to a riot during which five people died, including a Capitol police officer.
“Someone needs to tell the truth…the Republican Party has lost its way,” Kinzinger says in a six-minute video for the PAC, called Country first. Calling the January 6 riot at the Capitol “the sort of thing that happens in a failed nation, or a banana republic,” Kinzinger urged Republicans to reject “the politics of personality, and cast aside the conspiracy theories and the rage.”
Most Republican House members voted against impeachment, and much of the caucus’s leadership has supported the former president in recent days. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) initially blamed Trump for the riots but backtracked over a week later, meeting with the former president on Friday to discuss “taking back the House” in 2022.
“It shows that the former president is desperate to continue to look like he’s leading the party, and the problem is, until we push back and say this is not a Trump-first party, this is a country-first party…we’re going to be chasing our tail here in this situation,” Kinzinger said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday