The Man Who Refused to Bow
adam Kinzinger is a liberated individual—liberated from his party leadership, liberated from the fear of being beaten in a primary, liberated to speak his mind. The 43-year-old representative was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I don’t have a constitutional duty to defend against a guy that is a jerk and maybe says some things I don’t like,” Kinzinger told me, explaining what had pushed him to finally break with the president. “I do when he’s getting ready to destroy democracy—and we saw that culminate on January 6th.”
This was the sort of language a number of Republicans used in the immediate aftermath of the riot. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on January 13. But by the end of the month, McCarthy was traveling hat in hand to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump.
[Read: Kevin McCarthy’s pyrrhic victory]
“I was really pissed—I wasn’t surprised, but I was really upset,” Kinzinger said. “And to have seen it in just such a short amount of time go from ‘Donald Trump bears blame’ to ‘I’m going to go down and kiss the ring’ because you want to win your speakership. I mean, really? It’s that important? For what?”
In Kinzinger’s view, McCarthy’s Florida trip was an act of betrayal by a man who was supposed to put the interests of his own caucus—and of the country—first. “Starting about eight months ago, I noticed that he was never interested in defending [House Republicans] … He would throw us
