Kinzinger: ‘I’ve Been a Republican Far Longer’ than Trump — Not Letting Him ‘Hijack My Party’

Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he had been a member of the Republican Party “far longer than” former President Donald Trump and declared that wasn’t going to “let him come in and hijack my party.”

Anchor Chuck Todd said, “How long do you fight to stay a member of a club or reform a club that doesn’t want you? I’m referring to the Republican Party.”

Kinzinger said, “Look, I’ve been a Republican far longer than Donald Trump has, and I’m not going to let him come in and hijack my party and turn it into something that great people like Ronald Reagan and George W. and George H.W. Bush and all the great leaders back didn’t want it to be. I’m not going to let Donald Trump win at that. That’s what the fight is about. I believe in what we used to believe in with 21st-century solutions, though.”

He added, “I think a lot of it is just an overload of information for people. So instead of kind of working through that information, a lot of people have just chosen when venue, what people, what personalities they trust and put their faith in it, I think similar to Donald Trump. I think people have to take responsibility for their own ability to work through misinformation, to remember what the Constitution is about, to be okay with losing power for a little bit, and let that actually reaffirm that you have to go out and win a next generation of conservatives. Right now, again, we’re sitting here with Donald Trump throwing up all the smokescreen of four months ago. We want to move on. It’s hard to do when he keeps bringing it back to a stolen election which, of course, wasn’t true.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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