How Adam Kinzinger Found the Courage to Stand Up to Donald Trump

"I’ve come to realize what people fear more than death: they fear being kicked out of their tribe”. Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger was 1 of only 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted to impeach President Donald Trump in 2021. Adam talks with Skye about why the Republican Party continues to bend the knee to Trump, the cost of integrity, and why he has no doubt that standing up to Trump was "the right thing to do." (Full episode: Holy Post 629 - The Politics of Division)

Adam Kinzinger: There is no doubt in my mind why the Republican Party is in a death spiral — because there's nobody willing to stand in front of them and tell the truth. I've come to realize that people fear something more than they fear death: they fear being kicked out of their tribe.

If you ask somebody to give their career to stand up against Donald Trump or to say the truth, and it might cost you in a primary, you maybe lose your primary, we’ve already seen this. We don’t even have to use this as a theory. People are unwilling to do that. Because, trust me, and you've been through this too, I know in your own way — but the number of texts you get from people you thought were friends, the outrage… I just had somebody recently tell me never to contact him again because I'm the reason that Donald Trump had an assassination attempt against him. And this is a guy I've known since I was 16 years old.

That, I think, scares away the leaders. The leaders then become, “Okay, all I have to do, because I have to survive - I’m in an 80-percent red district - is do whatever the Republican base wants so I can keep getting reelected and so I can have access to power.” Well, in that process, the reality is there’s no secret leaders. There’s nobody sitting there on a white horse waiting for the moment to come in. It is these people. These people are the ones who define what the future of the GOP is. And if every one of them is scared to tell the truth, scared to go up against Donald Trump, because every one of us that ever did was excommunicated from the party, from the cult, frankly, that it's become. We’ve been pushed aside and made an example.

And now all of a sudden, you have no leaders. When Donald Trump says the election was stolen in 2020, and nobody on the media side that a certain person trusts, and nobody on the leadership side that a certain person trusts, stands up in front of them and says, “You’re being lied to. Here's the truth.” When the only ones saying it are me and Liz Cheney, and you can push Liz Cheney and me aside pretty easily, then you look at that and say, there is no doubt in my mind why the Republican Party is in a death spiral. Because there’s nobody willing to stand in front of them and tell the truth.

If you’d have had, I mean, it's a very different example, but look at Joe Biden when the Democrats basically all came out, all taking a risk, and said, “We have to replace Joe Biden. He’s not a great candidate.” And it happened eventually. Well, what happened after Access Hollywood? What happened after 2020? After January 6th? You had a few people come out, but you did not have a party by-and-large stand up and say, “This is not who we are, and we’ve got to put somebody else in there and win.” And when you don't have leaders, you can’t expect the followers of a party to force another direction.

And can I also say, as a guy that wore a uniform for the military for 22 years, being a man was not because I put on that uniform. So when you put on a uniform and you storm the Capitol, that doesn’t make you a man. What makes you a man is to defend the innocence of people. What makes you a man is standing to say, “We're going to support Ukraine, who is defending itself against an attack by Russia.” What makes you a man is to see vulnerable populations and defend them and bring hope. It’s not to yell at women. It’s not to be this fake tough guy. It’s not to wear a uniform and storm the Capitol. And that’s where Christianity, I think, has got to lead this lost generation of men in the future.

Skye: You know, going back to your point, that people will not sacrifice their careers for being outed in their community or in their social group, when you've created a social ecosystem that includes faith leaders, media personalities, and political leaders, and they're all reinforcing one another, it makes it that much harder to stand up and go against the flow. And I think as much as the Democratic Party has their own weird extreme flank, there are still journalists on the left who will stand up for truth. There are still faith leaders who will say what needs to be said. And the right just seems further down the road of this monolithic ecosystem that no one's willing to break out of. 

Which brings me back to January 6th, and you've said that it was your faith that led you to vote to impeach Donald Trump after January 6th. What gave you the ability to stand up in that ecosystem with only - was it nine other Republican congressmen who voted to impeach Trump? Very few. What allowed you or that small group of ten to go against the flow at that time?

Adam: It’s like, are we really going to be scared of voting to impeach this guy when we know, all you have to do is compare the red letters in the Bible against the behavior of this guy, and against the lies and against the conspiracy? And, you know, it doesn't matter how well somebody says or how strongly they say they're speaking on behalf of Christianity, if it violates what's said in those red letters, the red letters themselves say ignore that person.

And so for me, it was that. It was my faith. It was the fact that I wear Andreas O'Keefe on my wrist, a friend of mine killed in Iraq. And after I got back from Iraq and made the decision to run for Congress, I remember specifically thinking, if I'm going to take votes to send people to war, to die for their country, which is literally, now that I have a kid, I understand, this is literally the ultimate sacrifice. There is no bigger sacrifice. Your movie ends, you're faced with eternity, and your sacrifice helps people you don’t even know. When I realized that, I said, I cannot in good conscience - and this is in 2010 I’m saying this — if I have to take a career-ending vote but it’s the right thing for the country, I’ll do it. I thought it was going to be Social Security reform or something, right? I didn’t think it’d be actually defending democracy. But to my understanding, there is no way God is going to say, “Gosh, Adam, I wish you wouldn’t have voted to impeach this liar who tried to overthrow the government.”

And so when I went to the floor, I felt a complete and utter peace about it. I knew it was right. I had no doubts about it. I knew there was going to be pain after that - and there was pain - but I have no doubt it was the right thing. And I think, I don't know if it was, at that moment, God whispering in my ear to do it. I don't know if it was just what He's built in me over time. I don't know if it was that as well as the sacrifice people make for their country. But I had no doubt it was the right thing to do. And if every pastor in the world told me that I was wrong in doing that - and they don’t, by the way - but if every one of them did, I still don't think I would doubt that vote.