‘A liar, a charlatan and the most fragile ego of anyone I’ve met’: Kinzinger says Trump was worst president US ever had

Illinois Republican hopes his newborn son will be proud of his work on the January 6 select committee

Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger blasted twice-impeached ex-president Donald Trump as someone he wants his newborn son to know as “the worst president the United States of America ever had” just days after the Republican National Committee censured him for participating in the House probe into the 6 January 2021 insurrection.

Mr Kinzinger, who recently announced he would not stand for office in this year’s November midterm elections, told CNN’s New Day host John Berman he wants to make sure his son, who was born just three weeks ago, can “get a full accounting” of the worst attack on the Capitol since 1814 when he is old enough to begin studying history.

“I want to make sure that every Republican member of Congress, when their kids and grandkids are in school, they're gonna look and be like: ‘Hey, mom, or dad or grandma and grandpa, how did you vote on January 6?’” he said, adding that he thinks his colleagues who voted against certifying President Joe Biden’s victory that day – who were “not on the side of truth” will have a hard time explaining their actions in five or 10 years.

Mr Kinzinger also said he hopes his son will learn that Mr Trump was “a liar,” “a charlatan,” and “a man with a more fragile ego than anybody I've ever met”.

“The irony of it is he walks around like the tough guy, but he's the one that gets more offended and wounded and sad than anybody I know,” he observed.

The Illinois Republican said he hopes he can tell his son that the 6 January attack and the attempts to overturn the 2020 election which preceded it was “the moment … America hit the bottom of … its slide towards authoritarianism and we woke up”.

He added that he hopes his child will be proud of what he did by becoming one of just two Republicans to stand up against Mr Trump’s continued control of the party and the GOP’s growing authoritarian tendencies.

“I'm confident he will be because … short of this thing really going off the rails – this thing being our country in this experiment – I think we're gonna look back and say:

‘Wow, that was a moment we might have flown too close to the sun and we can never do that again,’” he said. “That's my hope and prayer, because if not, we're in real trouble”.