Adam Kinzinger says he 'got super drunk' when Trump visited Republicans at a legislative retreat in January 2017: 'How do we deal with this?'
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- Adam Kinzinger spoke to The Washington Post about his career as a House Republican in the age of Trump.
- He said he "got super drunk" when Trump visited a legislative retreat in Philadelphia in 2017.
- He also said he didn't vote to impeach Trump in 2019 because "I knew, if I voted for that, I was done."
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a member of the select committee investigating the January 6 riot, was a House Republican in good standing until he broke with President Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
That meant staying silent on any objections he had to Trump's presidency. It also involved heavy drinking when Trump visited a Republican legislative retreat in Philadelphia shortly after his inauguration, Kinzinger told The Washington Post.
"I got super drunk," he told The Post of the January 2017 event. "Trump's president, how do we deal with this?"
Though he did not vote for Trump in 2016, Kinzinger told The Post that he voted for him in 2020 in order to have "credit with the base," which made him feel "dirty."
And while Kinzinger was among the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for incitement of an insurrection following the January 6 attack, he did not vote for Trump's first impeachment in 2019.
"It's like I knew, if I voted for that, I was done," he said, telling the outlet that he was able to rationalize that vote by pointing to what Republicans had criticized as rushed process.
Now, Kinzinger is retiring rather than facing reelection. Serving alongside fellow Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, much of his time is spent presenting the January 6 committee's findings to the general public.
According to fellow committee members, Kinzinger is particularly helpful in understanding the right-wing media infrastructure.
"Nobody understands the GOP power structure better than Liz Cheney, but nobody understands the right-wing media infrastructure better than Adam Kinzinger," Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland told The Post. "We don't even know how to find those channels."