'Completely inept': Ex-GOP congressman details best and worst case scenarios from Trump 2.0 'clown show'

When former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) decided not to seek reelection in 2022, it spoke volumes about his view of the modern Republican Party. Kinzinger was one of two conservative Republicans who former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) chose for the bipartisan January 6 Select Committee — the other was then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) — and he has been a scathing critic of former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

The 45-year-old Kinzinger spoke candidly about the state of the GOP during an interview with The Guardian published on February 22, and he wasn't shy about saying that he believes a second Trump term would be "devastating for the world order as we know it" as well as a disaster within the United States.

Kinzinger told The Guardian, "The best-case scenario is a completely inept, ineffective government. The worst-case scenario is — look, in his four-year term, he did not understand what he was doing. He was just trying to survive, and he actually listened to people around him until the end. Now, he's going to put people around him that share his views, that will only reaffirm his views. And frankly, some of these people are pretty smart, and they know how to work around the Constitution or around the law to bring these authoritarian measures in."

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The conservative ex-congressman continued, "Is it going to be the end of the United States of America? I don't think so, but I'm going to stress: think. But it certainly will set us way back in the progress that we've made."

During the interview, Kinzinger discussed Trump's overall influence on his party — from Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York (who he slammed as a "disappointment") and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (who he said "knows better") to the Conservative Political Action Committee (which, Kinzinger lamented, has become "the clown show of conservatism"). And he finds it pathetic that some Republicans will praise Russian President Vladimir Putin just to offend liberals and progressives.

"Now, there's this idea that if you can piss off the liberals and the left — it is a culture war in the depth of it," Kinzinger told The Guardian. "The left does a lot of stuff that drives me nuts too, but if they can drive the left nuts, that's what they do. So, why do they love Vladimir Putin? Well, some people truly do, but some people just love him because he pisses off the left."

Kinzinger added, "That's no way to govern, but it's a hell of a good way to raise a bunch of money."

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Read The Guardian's full interview with Adam Kinzinger at this link.