Trump’s 2020 election lies could lead to civil war, warns Adam Kinzinger

‘We may have differences as left and right, but we have to bridge those differences because our basic survival is at stake, the basic survival of this democracy’

Illinois Republican Representative and outspoken Trump critic Adam Kinzinger has said that he believes the US could be on the brink of civil war if former President Donald Trump convinces enough people of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

“Look, if it election was legitimately stolen, I would be pretty ticked off too,” Mr Kinzinger told CNN on Monday. “That violates everything I swore to defend. And so when you convince that number of people, it is not a far thought ... to think that someday, some militia shows up somewhere to do something and then some counter-militia and, truly, at that point that is how you end up in a civil war.”

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Mr Kinzinger how dangerous it is for the GOP to “whitewash the events” of the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021 and for the RNC to refer to the insurrection as “legitimate political discourse”.

“It is extremely dangerous, and ... if there was a word even more intense than dangerous, I would use that,” Mr Kinzinger said.

He added that he believes civil war “is a real possibility”.

“Anybody that thinks that sounds cool, or they get to play dress-up because they somehow think it is going to be fun to go out and camp with their buddies and have a civil war, there are people that really think that, well, you know, the four or five heart medicines you’re on, Walgreens isn’t going to have them available when this place fails, and that is how serious this is,” Mr Kinzinger said.

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The Illinois Congressman, who’s not running for re-election this year, noted that he would have said there was “no chance” of a civil war a year ago.

“But I have come to realize when we don’t see each other as fellow Americans, when we begin to separate into cultural identities, when we begin to basically give up everything we believe so we can be part of a group, and then when you have leaders that come and abuse that faithfulness of that group to violent ends, as we saw on January 6, we would be naive to think it is not possible here,” Mr Kinzinger said. “And it is not like the blue and gray north and the south, it just turns into violence like you see in other countries.”

“We may have differences as left and right, but we have to bridge those differences because our basic survival is at stake, the basic survival of this democracy,” he added.

Mr Kinzinger spoke to CNN after being formally censured by the RNC along with Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney on Friday because of their work on the House Select Committee investigating 6 January.

He said “millions of people” genuinely believe that the election was stolen “because their leaders tell them” that it was.

“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement after the censure vote. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”

“Their statement didn’t even make mention of the violence that day,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Monday.

“Last week they crossed a line, issuing a statement that censured two Republicans who stood up to the Big Lie while also describing the insurrection of January 6th as quote, ‘legitimate political discourse’. Their statement didn’t even make mention of the violence that day,” Mr Schumer said.

“There’s no debate to be had here – January 6th was an armed insurrection. It was an attempt to reverse, through violent means, the outcome of a free and fair election,” he added. “And it was fundamentally rooted in Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the election of 2020 was illegitimate, which now the RNC seems to be giving its blessing officially.”