Adam Kinzinger: Trump Ignited the Proud Boys

It’s September six two thousand twenty three. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. This is one of those days where I don’t think we’re going to get to all of the good stuff. So joining me on the podcast, our good friend, Adam Kinzinger, former congressman from Illinois, founder of Country First, Also, now a political commentator for CNN and a crucial member of the January sixth committee.

Good morning, Adam. How are you?

I’m good. I’m I’m I’m glad we have so much good stuff to get to. I mean, that’s not well, I heard you say them the other day, like, what happened to August? Like, you know, August used to be pouring. Now we’re in September.

So it’s, like, August on steroids.

I have here on my list. I wanna talk about Tommy Tuberville. I wanna talk about Marjorie Taylor Green holding Kevin McCarthy hostage. You know, I wanna talk about Peter Navarro. I wanna talk about Jack Smith.

I wanna talk about There’s just so much stuff to talk about. So, alright, let’s just start with this. The big news of the last twenty four hours, the Proud Boys sentencing Enrique Tario, who was one of the leaders of the Proud Boys, received the longest sentence he had of any January six defendant. He got twenty two years. So talk to me about that, your reaction because, you know, it it’s taken a very, very long time, but These are the big sentences now.

And, of course, Enrique Tario and people like Joe Biggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Let’s just underline this. Saditious conspiracy. So twenty two years for Enrique Tariya.

This is it’s the right thing. There has been this I don’t know this sense that is crept into I don’t know if it’s been if you wanna call it Republican politics, conservative politics, Since I’ve been elected, there’s always this kinda undertone of, we’re all hoarding our weapons because someday there’s gonna be a civil war. I mean, you heard people talk about that all the time, and you know, and, you know, we’re get there’s gonna be a day we need to overthrow the government. And we all took it kind of lightly, you know, like, well, you know, of course, whatever they think. But that day came.

And these people, particularly, like some of the proud boys, the oathkeepers, they actually coordinated. They preplanned You know, they had weapons outside of Washington DC to bring in when Donald Trump declared the, insurrection Act. And so you know, if you have somebody that just kind of I don’t wanna say inadvertently because it takes away responsibility. Somebody that crossed the line kind of in the heat of the passion, You know, they deserve prison time. They deserve what they get, but somebody that spent days planning this and sparking it certainly deserves what he got.

And I I frankly hope he doesn’t get out early. And all you have to do is see what his supporters and people like him are out there saying, which is You know, this is the government shutting us down. There’s no remorse. And if there is remorse, it’s usually just in a court filing because it’s used to try to win some kind of concession from the judge. So look,

I don’t know if it

was been witnessed and you guys were all talking about this, which is it is using the law and putting people in jail is what’s gonna prevent the next thing from happening? He disagreed with me on something. I don’t hold that against him, but, you know, it’s it’s truly gonna be the thing that keeps people is to know that jail is real.

You said the other day on CNN, we have laws. We have to protect democracy. It’s the hardest form of government. I used to think it was the easiest. It’s the hardest because you have to have trust.

You have to have law. You have to enforce that law. There is no democracy if you do not enforce the rule of law.

There can’t be. As kids, we always, you know, democracy was kind of ingrained in us from before you were even really conscious, and you knew that you know, the government was formed by you going to the ballot box. And, you know, sometimes dad was mad because his party lost. Sometimes he was happy because his party won. And, you know, you went on.

And sometimes you went to war. Sometimes you had peace, but it was all you all felt like you had a stake in that to some extent. And And so you when you grow up believing that, and this is really a recent I don’t know. Maybe within six months, maybe a year, but, like, a recent understanding I’ve gotten, which is Like, when you grow up with that, you think it’s easy until you realize it can be easy if you can guarantee one thing, a basic level of trust. If you can guarantee that your vote counts, you can vote, and the person with the most vote wins, and that if, you know, the rule of law is violated, there’ll be consequences If you can guarantee all that, yeah, it’s actually a fairly easy form of government, but what I’ve come to realize is that’s actually the most difficult part about governing.

Because you said this yesterday, don’t mean to keep quoting you, but you inspired me yesterday when you said something about, like, you know, when you cross that red line once, Like, it is hard to ever go back. When you denigrate the rule of law, it’s hard to ever go back and hold at secrecy.

No. And I think that’s one of the lessons we’re learning here. Let’s talk about the Proud Boys a little bit because they they feel like they’re central to this story. You know, I know that when when the Proud Boys leaders, when Joe Biggs and, Ontario were convicted, you you said that Donald Trump lit the flame for January six, and the Proud Boys were the flame. And, of course, everybody has to remember that back in September twenty twenty, It was Donald Trump who prompted the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by.

And if there was any ambiguity about that, Tario texted, you know, on parlor standing by, sir, and mobilized, you know, all of these protesters. So it goes back to that moment and when he was specifically asked about the Proud Boys, and he said stand back and stand by, and they took that as a signal. Absolutely.

You know, it’s funny. Shortly after that, I was in Vegas for, military trip. Actually, we were doing a, I fly counter drug, and we were there for, there’s drugs in believe it or not. And, but I I know. I saw somebody with a shirt that said standing back and standing by.

Obviously, this person considered themselves a proud boy. They’re sitting there in the casino. And I was just like, wow. That’s, yeah, that’s a that’s a little weird. And so Donald Trump knew what he was doing.

He knew that, like, there was this kind of fire. I here’s an example. Like, there’s this I use it in my upcoming book. There’s this fire that’s burning in I think it’s Pennsylvania. There’s like a mine that caught fire sixty years ago that’s still on fire.

And every now and then somebody punches a hole and it pops out. So it’s like on the politics, it’s that. There’s this under burning fire. Mhmm. And when trump says something like, stand back and stand by the he’s basically punching a hole and allowing that to explode, but the fire still burns.

And so, you know, yes, they are very responsible. Donald Trump lit the fire and set it and basically convince these folks. I mean, all you have to do is look through some of the texts, convince these folks that he knew what they were doing He was on their side, and they were basically fighting this mission for holiness. And, everybody bears responsibility on that. I wanna say one quick thing too about, like, whether it’s the oathkeepers, the Proud Boys or whatever.

They prey on men that feel disconnected. And I can understand this, like because I I’ve fought with these. Like, when I got back from my rack, And, you know, you’re kinda sitting there and, you know, I was fortunate to be able to transition that into a run for Congress and kind of have a purpose, have a goal. But if I wouldn’t have had that, if I just came back and the government pat me on the head and said, here’s a check the rest of your life, now go fishing. I’m sitting around looking for a purpose.

And what the oath keepers do and and they did this to me, by the way, they tried to recruit me before I even knew what they were before I like, as I was running for Congress. Yeah. Somebody came and said, hey, you know, we’re we’re in this group. The oath keepers, you know, you made a note to the Constitution. And Back then, they weren’t they, you know, nobody knew what they were.

And thankfully, I didn’t join the oathkeepers. But, you know, I understood what they were trying to do, which is take somebody that feels disaffected and give them a mission. And that’s a very dangerous place. And that’s a bigger discussion, by the way, for this country, is how to give veterans, not just a paycheck, and not just health care, but a purpose. That’s a much broader discussion, but that is what these groups are preying on.

That that disconnected sense, frankly, of men, you know, of a certain age.

Okay. This is a very interesting question, because I was I was gonna ask you about, you know, the the I mean, it’s very clear there’s no remorse whatsoever as you pointed out, you know, Dominic Pizola, who is, you know, weeping in front of the judge, you know, begging for mercy as he, as he walks out after getting a ten year sentence shall Trump won. Right. These guys are not sorry for what they did.

Right.

I guess the question is the whole point of the prosecution and these long sentences is deterrent. Is to say, don’t ever try this again. Don’t think about it again. But is this really going to put an end to this sort of appeal or If it really is, this phenomenon of disconnected men, and they’re constantly being fed this constant diet of revisionist, his in seventeen seventy six, etcetera. Will it have that effect?

I mean, well, groups like the Proud Boy, shrivel up and die, or Are they going to actually grow in this current environment? What do you think?

It’s an interesting question, and My prediction is I think they do shrivel up and whether they die or whether they just shrivel up, you know, I don’t know. What back in the nineteen twenties? There was the, you know, frankly, in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, our stomping grounds.

Mhmm.

There was the rise of the ku klux planned to the point where they had a couple. Yeah. They were huge. It’s interesting. So in my district in Princeton, Illinois, they were doing a renovation on a theater.

And they found and showed me, like, a ticket to the Kuklaas Clan rally from nineteen twenty or whatever. And I’m, like, right there in Princeton, Illinois. And so that had grown to a million or two million people. And then eventually, the head of the crew class client gets arrested for basically child rape. He raped a sixteen year old girl.

And that killed the ku klux plan. And I think something similar is gonna happen here, whereas these leaders are going away. That’s some institutional knowledge. They’re not winning. Right?

When your leaders go to jail, you’re not winning at least in the short term. So I think it’s damaging. That said, I don’t think that means that this kind of strain is gone. It may just metastasize into something different. But I I do think like Proud Boys and oathkeepers, their best the best thing they had going for them was anonymity, and they’ve lost that.

Let’s talk about some of the reaction to all of this. So Enrique Catario gets twenty two years. Joe Biggs, one of the other leaders of Proud Boys got seventeen years. He is completely not remorseful. As you know, he calls in to Alex Jones’ show, you know, the Uber conspiracy, there’s apparently Joe Big used to work for in four wars and says that, yeah, he’s kinda counting on Donald Trump to pardon him.

This is the jail house call from Joe Biggs to Alex Jones.

Oh, I know he’ll pardon us. I believe that with all my heart. You know, the the thing is is hopefully getting him, you know, for him to be able to get into the position where he can at least be, I think, on the ball

to run. Right? Because once You have one. Minutes.

Yes. Right? It’s election interference

if they start trying to go after him once he’s on there. I have to understand that’s the the legalities of that But I do believe that Donald j Trump will pardon us that he should. We didn’t do anything. You know? We’re we’re his supporters.

We went there like he asked if things were wrong that day, and that’s sad, and that’s

Well, there’s no doubt they set us all up. We were all patsies that day, Joe. You gotta come back on anytime you want on the broadcast. Anytime you can get on eleven AM to three PM weekdays, Sundays, or we can always tape. We love you.

People should go to free joe Biggs dot com and donate to support your appeal. They wanna grind us down. They wanna break our will. Give me a give me Give me a give me a seventeen seventy six, brother.

Seventeen seventy six, brother. Oh my gosh.

What a Bulwark

Adam, y’all.

What do you

like to work? Donald Trump is encouraging this, this retconning of the attack on the capitol, the riot, the beating up of the cops, as somehow this modern day seventeen seventy six, and he has clearly encouraged them to believe that if he’s elected he will pardon them. He will wipe it all away.

Yeah. I mean, look, remember Lauren Bobert tweeting today, the seventeen seventy six on January six twenty twenty one. I know some of your listeners kind of understand the background we came from and some don’t. Let me just say there is this special as we’ve been talking about, the special feeling about, you know, being willing to take the government on, to take on tyranny, and that’s what they’re tapping into. And when you say give me a seven and I couldn’t imagine George Washington Lake.

Give me a seventeen seventy six brother. You know, it’s like, ugh, bro. So that like, right after the, you have one minute left thing, which he’s gotta be like, oh, that sucks. But right after that, basically Alice Jones said, You’re a patsy. You were thrown under the bus.

I think we’re at this moment where these supporters are willing to give Donald Trump a chance to pardon them and and they’re expecting it, but they’re very close to, I think, turning against him. Particularly, if he ends up, you know, if you look at what going on in some of these court cases. Everybody’s separating or what’s severing from each other. They’re all turning on Donald Trump. This could be a real moment I I don’t wanna be overly optimistic, but, this could be a moment where they’re starting to turn against him.

But if Donald Trump wins, listen, Charlie Sykes Donald Trump wins, and anybody that thinks he is not going to win, I hope he’s not gonna win. I would not bet money on he’s not going to win. He will pardon all these people.

I fully believe it. He will pardon all of them. And he’ll pardon them pretty much right away and they may even be invited to the White House, Enrique Tario, going right from the prison cell to the rose garden. You know, thinking about your analogy to the the Kuklux Clan and how big it was in the nineteen twenties and how it faded away. The one thing that the clan did not have back then was a president of the United States who was endorsing them and propping them up.

Now I do understand that there was a lot more sympathy, but There is something unique here. So here’s I’m sorry to do this this early in the morning, but Sarah Longwell, who was for reasons that I have no idea on one of the obscure cable channels. And she was asked about all of these guys who were being sentenced to these long sentences And she expresses concern about about the good guys, describing the people who attack the capital. And, again, You know, it it is this disconnect. You spent a year of your life documenting what happened on January sixth, the violence, the deaths, the brutalization of the cops, the attempt to stop Congress, all of this.

And in the minds of people like Sarah Palem, holding people accountable, is punishing good guys for being good guys. Let’s let’s just play this.

It’s so disheartening the examples that you’ve given, Eric,

it it

makes, the populace lose a lot of faith in our government, and that’s an understatement. Unfortunately, what what this leads to when we recognize the examples that you just gave the two tier different justice systems that that apply according to politics you know, it makes the good guy think what’s the use in being a good guy? What we’re we’re gonna be punished. You know, we’re we’re act on is what we are under the system. Just but we

can’t go — He’s

the cop. —

helpless and hopeless. We have to remember that we have three equal branches of government. Right? And Congress has a lot to do with what’s going on in the judiciary. Congress can’t keep sitting back.

Especially Republicans in the majority in in some of these areas, Eric, they can’t sit back and just all of this happened because it is dismantling of our traditional judicial system. Doesn’t

what the fuck is she talking about?

She sounds like Vivec. Oh, I know. Like, just kinda like I’m gonna do the circle here of garbage

you know, first of all, it’s it’s the whole good guy’s like, geez, what’s the point of being a good guy? I mean, if you can’t smash the window of the capitol and throw feces on the wall, and tase cops and say, hey, take their gun and kill them with their own. If, you know, what kind of an American is it when you can’t take an American flagpole you know, and and use it to beat up a cop. And if you’re actually arrested for that, well, man, what’s the point of being a good guy? And why isn’t Congress stepping in to, I don’t know, obstruct justice because I This is the brain worm that’s out there.

It is brain worms. It’s like, why can’t you just walk through the US capital with a confederate flag? And I’ll get it. Right? Like, why?

America first. Yeah. Look, here’s a deal. So take somebody like Sarah Longwell, and I, you know, I don’t know if she is now.

Please take.

Now a victim of the brain worms or if she’s just if you become so cynical that you don’t believe that, you know, we can talk about, like, civil war and we can talk about the rule of law. It’s not actually gonna happen, so I’m gonna use it. Or, you know, is it that cynical or is it like they truly now believe tribe against tribe. I think either way is not a good answer, but, like, this is the frightening thing to me is just that, like, what happens if Democrats even try to do a tenth of Republicans did. You would have Sarah Longwell on this show saying rule of law.

We have one branch that informed. It’s that l o l nothing matters. And this is where, again, the only advice I can give and how to defeat this, like, we can talk about it and then we need to because people need to be aware of it. The only advice I can give is you have to win elections. And by the way, you win elections by seeing what people care about today and going after those issues Donald Trump cannot win again and somebody like Vivecannot win or else this continues.

It is. Of course, we’re we’re rolling our eyes and making a little bit of fun of Sarah Longwell, but the reality is that Sarah Palin is not saying anything that is fundamentally different from what the Republican nominee for president is saying. And, you know, Donald Trump is, you know, expanding his lead. Donald Trump is saying the exact same thing. In fact, even going further, demanding the Congress somehow intervene as if and and this is becoming now internalized here.

This idea that if you were a member of Congress, then you have an obligation to come in and defund the special counsel or somehow obstruct what a jury is doing or nullify what is happening in a court of law. I mean, five minutes ago, this was completely crazy talk, and now it’s really quite worth docs. I mean, I’m reading in the New York Times today where, you know, the former governor of Wisconsin who I know quite well. Scott Walker, is endorsing this idea of simply impeaching and removing the newly elected state Supreme Court justice because she won’t recuse herself in a case. Basically wiping out more than a million votes in his home state because she might rule against them on redistricting.

And it’s like, this has become kind of just a talking point. Well, of course, we remove judges we don’t like. Of course, we use our power you know, to hammer prosecutions we don’t like. And, you know, again, as I said yesterday, once you cross that line, once you begin doing it, you know, it’s like taking, you know, one hit of meth. It’s gonna keep going and going and going.

And so even sort of the normie mainstream Republicans are like, yeah. Of course, we have to use our legislative majorities to kneecap the courts.

As a member of Congress, here’s what I can tell you the pressure is because we dealt with this. Remember, this was, like, the defund obamacare, where it’s like, you go to a town hall or you go out in the district. And this one little thing, so in Wisconsin right now, it’s if you’re a state representative, the one thing is are you going to impeach the justice or whatever? And that is the only thing people ask. You could say, like, look, I have the most conservative voting record.

I’m gonna fight. They’re like, people are you gonna vote to impeach the justice because I had

a group

tell me. And that pressure is so intense. You end up either having to decide I’m not gonna run again, or I’m gonna impeach the justice. And it’s like rule by mob rule.

You know, I know that there was, there was an effort over the weekend to get some prominent Republican to speak out against this. This is an attack on the independent judiciary. This is going too far. And I have to say reading through the New York Times story today, not one prominent Republican is willing to say, okay, guys. You know, I wanna win, but we need to win elections, and we just lost that election.

I mean, we lost that election by eleven points in April, and you’re telling me that in September, we’re just going to overturn it but the legislature. Now, the Democrats are pushing back. I don’t know much about how this is, playing out, but I’m reading that they’re actually gonna have, like, four million dollar campaign just attacking this, you know, going on the air and saying, look at what, the Republicans are doing. I mean, this is gonna just backfire in their face. Okay.

Let’s leave this to the side. These are so much else going on. Alright. So other big development, special counsel, Jack Smith. Warning Tuesday, the former president Trump’s daily statements threatened to taint a jury pool in Washington, in the criminal case, Trump’s provocative comments about both Smith’s team and the judge, Tanya Chutkin, who’s presiding over the case.

Have been a central issue since the indictment was filed last month. Prosecutors have repeatedly signaled their concerns about the impact of Trump’s social media posts. Tuesday’s complaint from the justice department underscores the extent to which Trump’s social media attacks are testing the patience of prosecutors and risk exposing him to sanctions from the judge. So your thoughts on this because, of course, we’re all wondering When are the judges gonna say enough is enough or is Donald Trump going to be immune from that?

Yeah. It’s a great question. I think there’s no doubt there’s gonna be that moment where a judge has to say this stops. I mean, Donald Trump has gotten more didn’t even know it was possible. He’s gotten more unhinged every day.

It’s crazy.

Yes. That’s true. Right. It’s not a flat line. It’s getting worse and worse and worse.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you didn’t even think it could get worse. It’s, like, it’s, like, I imagine him waking up or going to sleep with bed hair just writing these crazy things out, these crazy diatribes, And so eventually a judge is gonna have to say something. And I think the question is gonna be, and that, you know, as a not lawyer is, can they enforce that? I mean, Obviously, if it was me doing it, yeah, they could send somebody to arrest me and enforce if I violated this rule or the ruling by a judge, Can they do that with the former president? Yeah.

Of course, they can. What’s gonna be the reaction to that? You know, who knows? But I think at some point, they have to do it. Or else, you’re basically creating a two tier justice system in which Donald Trump can tank the jury pool with a very big megaphone that even the mafia doesn’t have to be able to do that.

And other people can’t. And we we have to believe in a one tier justice system here.

Hey, folks. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks. You are not the crazy ones.

So why not head over to the Bulwark dot com and take a look around. Every day, we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark plus membership free for the next thirty days to claim this offer, go to the bulwark dot com slash Charlie Sykes. That’s the bulwark dot com forward slash Charlie Sykes gonna get through this together. I promise.

Alright. So here’s another interesting story. This is from ABC News. Trump was warned that the FBI could raid Mar a lago months ahead of time. His lawyer’s notes show.

Here’s the ABC story. In May of last year, shortly after the justice department issued a subpoena to former president Trump for all classified documents at his Mar a lago estate, Trump’s then lead attorney on the matter, Evan Corcoran warned the former president in person at Mar a lago that not only did Trump have to fully comply with the subpoena, but that the FBI might search the estate if he did not according to courtrooms’ audio notes following the conversation. Only minutes later, during a poolside chat away from Trump, corcoran got his own warning from another Trump attorney. If you push Trump to comply with the subpoena, he’s just going to go ballistic. Now again, these are captured in a series of voice memos that he made on his phone the very next day, and everybody’s got their hands on all of this.

Once again, we’re being reminded that Donald Trump really did think he was above the law. He really didn’t think he had to comply. This is not just some inadvertent removal of documents you have his lawyer saying, you need to comply with this. This might happen. They will come after you.

And either Donald Trump just didn’t believe him that they would actually execute a search warrant, or he just didn’t care because he’s Donald Trump.

So you and I think are fairly well adjusted individuals in put yourself in the mind of having been present in the United States with everybody, you know, tending to you and giving and then now having to be sub to the law. It would be a little humbling. You and I would do it, but now put yourself in the seat of a complete utter absolute beyond even the word doesn’t describe narcissus assist. Somebody who now has reached the highest pinnacle, literally at the top job in the world, the most powerful job in the world, got defeated, can’t accept his defeat still brings people to Mar a lago to worship him, by the way. It’s amazing.

And now is being told that the little justice department and these little FBI agents are gonna make him turn his stuff over. So I still kind of buy into the belief that he wasn’t necessarily looking to sell it to the saudis or anything, but it was just a pride thing. He wanted it. He wanted papers, but I gotta tell you I have not ruled out, and I don’t know if we’ll ever know the answer to this, but I haven’t ruled out that he wanted to hold on to it for other reasons, for more nefarious reasons, because I have no doubt that Donald Trump does not care an ounce about the United States of America. He will do good things for the US if it makes him look good.

And I think he’ll do bad things if it makes him look good. I think the bottom line is he cares about one thing Donald Trump. And, I don’t mean to be overly harsh. I just believe that. I believe the guy is incapable of thinking of even, you know, of anything but his own self and his own well-being.

Yeah. And it’s probably sad today thinking that, you know, his BFF, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un are meeting without him. Kind of the Yeah.

He’s, like, not invited to the party.

The access of assholes, and he’s just not there. Yeah. That’s guy that’s gotta be tough. Okay. But Given all of this, we’re, you know, we’ve been talking about Trump for a very long time, but Wall Street Journal poll over the weekend, finding Trump with fifty nine percent of Republican voters recording him fifty nine percent.

And he’s running even with Joe Biden. He’s getting crazier and going up in the polls among Republicans. Even in a crowded field.

I’ll first off say on the general election. Again, if you’re a Democrat listening to this, And you get upset when we say this is a close race? Fine. Get upset. Okay.

Then do not be surprised when Donald Trump wins in twenty twenty four. Now I’m gonna say if god came down and said I had to bet on one side or the other, all of my money, I bet on Joe Biden right now, but I would not do that very comfortably. Because we have got to understand that there are real concerns out there. And and for the Democrats, you have to address them. I I I see that Joe Biden is running, you know, thirty million in TV I think that’s smart from a Biden perspective.

You’ve gotta sell your message on the economy. Yeah. On the Republican side, Charlie, here’s the issue that I’ve I’ve come to really understand is Yeah. First off, if you had just one opponent to Donald Trump, it would be much easier right now. We have, like, ten opponents to Donald Trump, even though none of them are somehow running against him, whatever.

But when Donald Trump gets indicted, okay, if you’re an average Republican voter and you’re sitting there, this indictment comes out, you’re kinda confused. And so, yeah, you’ll listen to what Donald Trump has to say, but you’re also watching these other Republicans and what they have to say about it. And every one of them, So the people you trust, every one of them are looking at you through a television screen and saying, this is a witch hunt by the justice department. When person you trust after person you trust tells you that, you’re gonna believe it’s a witch hunt from the justice department. And if you believe that, You’re gonna rally behind the guy that is being unfairly attacked.

Yeah. So when these Republicans sit around and they convince themselves and I know them, And I know what they’re doing with the exception of Chris Christie, Acea and Will Saletan, and you convince yourself that I will defend Donald Trump because eventually he’s gonna burn out. You are actually emboldening him and you’re strengthening him because you’re convincing the people that trust you. I mean imagine people, you know, your family trusts you and you’re lying to them. The people that trust you, you’re telling them this is a witch hunt.

They believe because of you that this is a witch hunt and of course they’re gonna get behind the hunted in the witch hunt.

I’m wondering what’s going on inside, Adam Kinzinger’s mind, and Liz Cheney’s mind, you spent more than a year, investigating who Donald Trump was, what Donald Trump did. You laid out this case to the American people in great detail. Since then, you have the Justice Department laying out how he broke the law. You have a comprehensive indictment down in Georgia, accusing him of racketeering and conspiracy. And yet, it seems like the overwhelming possibility that Donald Trump will be the nominee of your former party or your current party.

You consider yourself a Republican? I don’t wanna, like, put words in your mouth.

I guess. I mean, I I only because I’m unwilling to go up that ground, but, you know, I’m not gonna vote Republican right now. Alright. So how do you think about this?

Because with all the things that you know that you did, that you explained to the American people, it’s not a secret. There’s no secret knowledge, how awful Donald Trump’s behavior was, what he attempted to do, the way he behaved in January, And you’re sitting there watching Donald Trump’s surging to another nomination.

So let me get deep for a second and say, you know, I knew that there would be a cost to doing this. I mean, when this started, I thought that, you know, by now, people would have kind of opened their eyes and woken up. I think I underestimated the cost it would be to my family, you know, those kinds of things. I would do it all again. I would be nervous, but I would do it all again.

And I still sit with this belief that history will judge what we did very well. And I think, you know, Republicans of whether it’s five years from now or ten years or even twenty years from now. We’ll look back and kind of see what Liz and I did as, you know, a really important step in what this party is now. And I believe that. And I and I’m and I’m willing to kind of see the history of that.

The other thing, when I went into politics, I remember I’d literally just come out of Iraq when I ran And I remember thinking, look, if nineteen, twenty year olds are gonna die for this country, giving up a political career, is not a huge sacrifice. And I held that with me all the way to the end. So there’s no, like, woe is me Jonathan Last I am blown away because I remember on January seventh or eighth, something like that. Everybody was against Trump. Yeah.

Fred upton came to me and said, Trump is gonna run again. And I’m like Fred, you’re insane. He always has these prophecies, we call them the Upton prophecies because he’s always pretty good. And, I never believed him. And true enough, he he was right.

You know, the party turned around. And I I think back to Fred telling me that. And I’m, like, I was naive to think that this was the end of the insanity, but it wasn’t. So, yeah, it’s a it’s something I struggle with, you know, sometimes, but I have zero regrets about it.

At some point, you you don’t have a choice when you look at it and you go, okay. Like, what is it worth to go along? But, you know, what is amazing to me? And again, this goes back to this point about, you know, once you cross the line, once once you’ve taken the meth ones, it, you know, becomes easier to take it. It becomes harder to go back to what you were before.

Once you’ve made this bargain, but still it is remarkable that if you think about where we were on January seventh and everything we have learned since then, And you have fifty nine percent of republic and saying, yeah, this is our guy. You know, in in in part, it is kind of a, you know, a big middle finger, as I’ve described it, a big middle middle finger to to the Democrats, to the media to, you know, to, like, yeah, we’re gonna stick with this guy. But it is an amazing thing. I remember the first time on the podcast that I raised the it was back in twenty twenty during the campaign. And I said, you know, if he loses, he he can run-in twenty twenty four and people are like, what?

Business had never even occurred to people.

Yep.

And I keep also thinking about what must be going through Ron DeSantis’ mind because you know that there were people who told the media, you know, off the record, well, okay, things are kinda bad right now. You know, our candidate completely sucks, but wait until those Georgia indictments come down because that will turn things around because there was even recently this residual hope that something would happen that would turn the voters against them, but they weren’t But I’m in at this point, and let me bounce this question off you. What would have to happen right now? What would have to happen between now and next spring? For Republican voters to turn against Donald Trump, what would he have to do?

I mean, if he’s caught beating baby whales to death with the bodies of baby seals, in fifth Avenue. No. That would be that

would show he’s a tough guy.

It had turned out that he’d paid for multiple abortions for his various mistresses. I once thought like, for five minutes about No.

That’s cool because he’s he’s got he’s hooking up with a lot of girls.

That’s what

you know, that’s how they see this. Yeah. I think, look, there’s two things that I think could do it. Number one, if there is a trial and, you know, he is shown basically being subservant to the court, the truth comes out and he’s convicted. I think that is quite possible.

Yes.

The other thing, and this is very unlikely,

is I I so I I think a

lot in war analogies. And so you know, imagine you’re sitting there with a platoon. You’ve got an objective. You have to hit. And you know that everybody’s gotta Charlie Sykes mound.

Right? Everybody’s gotta charge that objective. And one guy gets up and heroically makes a run and of course gets shot down. Another person makes a run and gets shot down. Somebody’s looking around at each other.

If finally everybody stands up and charges that, there’ll be some casualties, but they’ll take the objective. And I think that has to happen in the Donald Trump case. We’re finally people just start speaking out, and I think that’s probably not gonna happen. Probably. And so I don’t know.

So I don’t know what’s gonna happen except that there’s gotta be What what is it that serial killers say? They’re like, the first kill is the toughest, and then it’s easier after that. It’s like, the first time you accept a Donald Trump lie, you have to look at from the mirror and probably vomit in the toilet. But after that, you know, whatever, it’s it’s easy. It’s just who he is.

Let’s talk about your your former colleagues, back in the house. And in the Senate, Marjorie Taylor Green continues to play a an interesting role. Now we’re faced with the possibility of a government shut down by the end of the month. I think there are a lot of people that have just simply decided that it’s probably going to happen, you know, despite the the impact on the economy. One of the problems, of course, is that you have these hold outs from the Freedom caucus.

We’re demanding spending cuts, but then Marjorie Taylor Green appears to be demanding other things, including the impeachment of Joe Biden, maybe cutting off all AD Ukraine as the price for her vote for any deal. And I think I’ve told Jonathan Capehart last night. I said, you know, this is not a negotiation. This is this is a ransom demand. And she’s got a hostage.

You know, Kevin McCarthy is her hostage, and she’s gonna see how far that she can push him. So There’s also the dynamic where the Senate Republicans are signaling they’re just gonna jam Kevin McCarthy. They’re gonna go ahead and they’re gonna pass bipartisan spending bills, they’re not gonna go along with cutting off funny for Ukraine. So so what’s gonna happen? I mean, it feels like, you know, we’re playing chicken with with dueling clown cars.

How does it play out?

We’ve been here before and I’ve been part of it. And I’ll tell you each time we approach government shutdown, you know, we all panic. I do too. I’ve never voted for a shutdown. I guess you don’t really form.

You just don’t vote for the things that keep it open. But you always have this group, and it’s particularly of the new kinda crazies that come in every class that think a government shutdown is gonna work. And it’s like every new baby has to touch the stove once, and that’s what’s happening here. I see ninety percent chance the government shuts down. Now this is different than a debt default.

Right? A different than a debt default. This isn’t gonna collapse the economy. Republicans Maybe once in history, but Republicans have never won a government shutdown. Why?

Because Democrats are willing to do things like continuing resolutions. So like Let’s just keep spending the money we’ve been spending. Republicans are always the ones putting things on the requirements, and the American people are smart enough to know when the government shuts down that it’s the Republicans doing it. So it may be a twenty day shutdown. It may be particularly with the tight Republican majority.

Maybe a thirty day shutdown. But the Republicans will lose, and they’ll pay a price for it. And quite honestly, if the, McConnell and the Republicans and the Senate work with Democrats to pass bills and send them to the house. That will guarantee that McCarthy has to cave. And, probably be the end of McCarthy’s speakership.

We’re pretty close to

Usually, I understand even stupid positions in politics, but sometimes, stupid is beyond stupid, and then there’s Tommy Tuberville. I don’t want you to explain this to me. Tommy Tuberville, the senator from, Alabama who I’ve I’ve described as, and there’s a lot of competition for this. I mean, you know, to be the dumbest member of the Senate. I mean, if Marshall Blackburn is in the Senate,

and, you know, it’s the it’s always blackburn stories, by the way, from the house. Some next time.

Oh, man.

I could just do twenty minutes.

Yeah. I’m gonna make a note on that. Okay. But let’s talk about Tommy for a moment. She’s got this hold on all of the promotions in the military.

And you had this extraordinary episode yesterday where the three non political, you know, heads of the armed services, write an op ed piecing. This is disastrous. We don’t have leaders now. You know, in the major branches of the military. And, you know, deep breath here, if Democrats were doing this, the Republicans would have their hair on fire.

This would be it would be treason. How dare you undercut the military? And here’s the former party. Of National Security, the Republicans, who are letting Tommy Tuberville recap the military at a time of rising tensions and on higher cost Okay. Leaving us why he’s doing this because he’s Tommy Tuberville, and he’s stupid and he’s deplorable and everything.

Why are we publicans letting him do this. Why is Mitch McConnell allowing him to do this? Why is Chuck Schumer allowing one freaking senator to screw over the US military. I mean, how is this possibly a political winner?

I don’t know. And and I’ll tell you, I So I’ve always been kind of against this. Like, let’s change the rules of the Senate argument because I’m like, well, there’s then the other side’s gonna be in. But I’ve come around on some of it, like, whether it’s spending bills in the Senate, you know, we need to get past the filibuster rules or whether it’s something like this. The fact that one person out of a hundred I mean, literally, you could’ve liked Boza the clown.

He’s not, like, prevented from running, and you could put him in the Senate. You could, you know, elect an avowed Nazi literally and put him in the Senate. And they have the power to stop this. I think that has to change. And I’ll tell you, like, the fact that there are people that are unwilling to speak out on this or that are going along with it, The Republican Party and I’m saying this is a military member.

The Republican Party has always gone after the Democrats for politicizing the military. And I’ll tell you to an extent there’s some of it. Like, you know, when you have a democratic administration, the number of times you have to sit at the computer and do social justice issues, kind of CBTs, it increases. But we’re still very effective at killing the enemy. Now the Republicans, I think, have no right to claim that against the Democrats.

Because they have taken what should be an institution with bipartisan support and try to jam their social issues into and use that as the vehicle they can control for things like abortion and everything else. They are politicizing the last vestige of government that has bipartisan support. And honestly, Charlie, this worries me more than anything that has ever happened in this government is the politicization of the military. Because that has always been the confident backstop. We knew on January six that no matter how bad it got, at least there was a military that in the worst case scenario could come in and fix it.

If you start wondering that the military is on a political side, one or the other, And that’s not even an option. That’s when citizens ultimately end up taking up arms and things turn really violent.

Okay. So I genuinely do not understand this why don’t Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer say, okay. You know what we’re gonna do? We’re just gonna have an up or down vote on this. We’re just going to bring this to the floor and, you know, screw Tommy Tumber, because my guess is that it would be like ninety three, ninety four votes — Yeah.

— to confirm each and every one of these. Yeah. So why don’t they do that?

That’s an answer for a senator because I simply don’t know. Okay. I mean, I would bring it to the floor. Yeah. I would have him debate it out.

I would make him You know, this idea of, like, filibuster without actually filibustering, you just declare your intent to filibuster, and then you have to go to a cloture vote I would make Tommy Tuberville actually go onto the floor and filibuster, like, and speak until he pees his pants.

And then pound him pound. Yeah. This is a nightmare scenario. I I would think that that he’s going up against, you know, the heads of all of these armed services, you know, having flag officers telling him the consequences of this, you know, for a Republican to do this is just extraordinary. Yep.

So Absolutely.

K. I’m I’m probably gonna be gonna get ratioed on on all of this, but I was going through social media this morning, seriously. And I scrolled past a video of Chuck Schumer speaking on the floor of the Senate about something or other. Okay? And I’m thinking, wow, wait.

But I haven’t seen him. And, like, where has he been? Yeah. We see Mitch McConnell all the time as a Chuck Schumer is the majority leader of the United States Senate. They control the Senate.

And yet, where is this guy? I do worry that that Democrats just think they’re going to win all these things by default.

It’s funny you say that because you mentioned it and I’m like, oh, yeah. Like, I haven’t seen him either. McConnell’s gotten a lot of attention obviously with his freeze up slightly, but

you know, not the great attention.

No. Well, what’s the thing that you say? Like, what’s the most dangerous places between a camera and Chuck Schumer, and now all of a sudden, he’s quiet. Like, the Democrats, Look, I don’t agree with Democrat economic policy, but I think they have a lot to brag about. They need to be out there bragging and talking and bragging and talking because, they’re losing that fight right now.

So, yeah, I don’t I don’t get it. I don’t know where he’s been.

Okay. So let’s talk, in the minutes we have left about Ukraine. You have been very, very outspoken about all of that. There’s been this three day operation by the Ukrainians, but there are doubts about the success of the counter offensive. And I feel like we’ve been having this debate every single week since this war began.

What should we be doing for them? Are we doing enough? Are we giving them what they need and was it fast enough. And I guess I, you know, think back, and I’ve heard, you know, both sides of this. And you got a lot of flack for talking about a no fly zone, but It seems to me, and you tell me because this is in your wheelhouse, it seems naive to expect that a modern army can mount an offensive or a counter offensive without air superiority.

And there has been this tremendous reluctance to give them air power. What do you think?

Right. So, Charlie Sykes here’s two things that annoy me. You know, these anonymous leaks from the Pentagon that said that the Ukrainians are too casualty averse. Right? Look, we left Afghanistan because we were losing, like, a guy a month I don’t mean to, like, denigrate that loss.

That’s very serious loss. But if you’re gonna say the Ukrainians are casualty averse because they’re losing hundreds and hundreds of people you know, charging a trench like in World War one, and they don’t have air power. We train them in combined arms, you know, maneuvers, which includes air power. We we refuse to teach them about how to get through, you know, land mines because we haven’t dealt with land mines in so long. Look, here’s the deal.

Every time, and these early conversations on the Bulwark, I remember you’d you’d have a few people even arguing with what you were saying. You were like, you gotta give them this stuff. It’s like, look, everything that at one point, we said we have to give Ukraine. We ultimately end up giving it to him, and we end up giving it to him late. Imagine if at the very beginning, I think the Biden administration finally now understands.

That Russia’s not gonna nuke us. They’re not gonna use nukes. I think they understand that now. Imagine if we could go back a year and they were operating f sixteens. Now they had abrams they were using atackems.

The military tries to play like we have a limited number of atackems. We do have a limited number of atackems. We also have a missile that is being produced to replace that. These things are gonna be destroyed because they’re getting old and we’re scared to give them away. They need to step up and say, get this done.

I’ve come around to believe that it’s not really necessarily the Biden administration that’s being slow on this. I think it’s the Pentagon, but I think the Biden doesn’t know how to push back on the Pentagon. The Pentagon are being counters. Their job is to make sure we have enough ammunition in every possible theater of where to win. I get it.

Politicians have to come in and say, we’re willing to take a risk, and the risk is We have a chance to defeat one of the greatest enemies of the United States without firing a shot from our own guns, and we’re gonna take that risk and do it. And that’s where we’re at right

now. So you have a book coming out this fall renegade my life and faith, the military, and defending America from Trump’s attack on democracy. So, Adam, when are we gonna see this thing?

It’s coming out October seventeenth. I’m doing the audio book as we speak. Well, not like right now, but this week. And, that’s a tough process. But Yeah.

I’ll be putting a I’ll be posting something in a day or two about pre orders. So pre orders are very helpful, but definitely I think you guys will like it and It’s a big, a good, a good view.

I am looking forward to it, Adam Kinzinger, former Congressman, the January sixth committee. Thank you so much for coming back on the Bulwark podcast.

You bet. Anytime.

And thank you all for listening. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow, and we will do this all over again with a new episode of the Trump trials. The Bullbrook podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.