Who is Adam Kinzinger trying to kid?
After years of supporting former President Donald Trump trying to advance his own career, Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois’ 16th District is pandering to the anti-Trump tar and feathering by the news media and the Left. Not because he thinks what Trump did was wrong, but because he sees a real opportunity to politically benefit
By Ray Hanania
I am so tired of the biased, one-sided BS that fills the media these days, the trash.
Yes, former President Donald Trump was unhinged and goofy. But are you really trying to tell me that he was the only one? That it was only Republicans? That Congressman Adam Kinzinger is trying to define himself as the new “face” of the conservative movement by trashing Trump?
Where was he between 2017- and 2020?
They should put Kinzinger’s picture next to the word “Opportunist” in the Merriam Webster Dictionary. Or better yet, list him on the thesaurus with the phrase “political hypocrite.”
Where was Kinzinger when Trump was trumpeting his programs during the past four years? How come he didn’t speak out sooner? Was it because he didn’t see an opportunity to promote himself and suck up to the anti-Trump news media — a true oxymoron considering the “news media” and “anti-Trump” have been one and the same.
This isn’t a defense of Trump by any means. The guy did some good and he did some bad. He was impeached twice by a partisan Democratically controlled U.S. House, the second time with Kinzinger types who only jumped on the anti-Trump bandwagon because they hoped people might not look at their own records in office.
And please don’t tell me that U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer is somehow any better than Trump? Schumer is an anti-Arab racist who has supported some of the worst legislation hat has stripped the rights not only of Muslims but of Christians in Palestine and Jews who oppose Israel’s racist government.
Maybe Kinzinger thinks he can get more of that pro-Israel PAC money for his campaign. He certainly sees this as an opportunity to redefine himself from his past and maybe take control of the Republican Party.
I always knew that electing Trump in November 2016 would pull the rug out from under the Republican far right, but I never thought it would bring the entire Republican Party crashing down simply because no one has the courage to stand up to the bullying and biased narrative being sold about Tump, his role in the Jan. 6 so-called “insurgency” or “coup,” depending on how far off the rails you really are, I guess.
The facts are this. Kinzger voted with Trump 86.7 percent of the time. And it would have been higher but in the past year he started to drift away from supporting Trump in order to position himself for political exploitation.
In the 115th Congress, Kinzinger supported Trump 91.2 percent of the time. In the 116th Congress, Kinzinger supported Trump 82.5 percent of the time. In the last year of the last Congress, Kinzger walked away from Trump unwilling to take on the biased and racist news media, and voted only 59.3 percent of the time, which is still significant.
Does he think we’re stupid and that we have forgotten. The worst kind of politician is the hypocrite who does things not because of principle but because of selfish opportunity.
The funny thing is that Kinzinger is beloved by the news media and they have been doing softball interviews with him, saturating the media time slots with his quotes, bios and skewered positive backgrounds so as not to scare him away and encourage him to be more anti-Trump.
Biden is clearly the better president. But in November 20116 when the choice was either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, Trump was the best choice. He represented a chance that he might change the insider culture of the “Capital Beltway,” or what Trump called the “swamp.”
If the America can’t have a civil discussion about Trump without raging into self-serving hyperbole, which is what the media is doing and many on the Left and some on the Right are doing, too, then this isn’t the free Democracy that we claim it is. It is being turned into a bully pulpit where rational thought is defiled by true evil doers who really don’t care about America. All they care about is themselves.
Maybe we should call this era in American politics, the “Kinzinger Era of smear.”
Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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