Adam Kinzinger: Unplugged

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Welcome to the Bullework podcast on Charlie Sykes. Happy Monday, and we are joined by our good friend, Congressman, Adam Kinzinger, who who made the big time this weekend? Yeah. Adam, big time. You’ve caught this.

Right?

Some thirteen year old and personated me on Saturday night live.

Okay. So in in case anyone missed this, Adam Kinzinger was portrayed by a thirteen year old apparently on on Saturday Night Live, which managed not to pronounce your name correctly. But anyway, this is what they did. He

got away with a lot of stuff in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the early two thousands, the twenty tens, and the early twenty twenties. But that ends now with us because I’m miss stir King’singer, and he will respect my authority.

So I I had three reactions to that. I laughed. And then I thought, actually, that’s not really funny at all. And then I thought fuck those guys. I don’t know.

What did you think?

I don’t mind it. I mean Well, I don’t know if that, like, mispronunciation was supposed to be part of a joke if he truly I don’t know. And I think I do think that whole the joke that you played there. It’s got a point which is students gotten away with stuff, basically his whole life. And so I thought it was kinda funny.

But at the same time, it’s like, I don’t know. I hope that we can kind of put it into the you know, it hasn’t gotten in trouble since seventies eighties and nineties for sure. See, I wrestle with all of

this because I I do think that the only way you can maintain sanity in, you know, in these insane times is to keep a sense of humor. On the other hand, At the other end of the spectrum, it’s it’s treating the world burning as kind of a joke, you know. You need to cope by, you know, keeping your wits about you On the other hand, when you kind of look at all this like, hey, this is really funny. This guy’s gonna get away with this. He’s gonna tear down democracy.

And he’s gonna be the president again. Isn’t that hilarious? I don’t know there’s kind of something cringe worthy about that. You

know, I guess this is where I in the one hand, you have to laugh because you know. Yeah. I mean, it’s they’re trying to be funny and and I think, you know, part of the problem in politics is everybody loses their sense of humor. But I think we are in such a serious moment. I mean, whether it’s, you know, the war in Ukraine, whether it’s the, you know, the domestic extremists here, the people that wanna, you know, basically make Donald Trump king forever.

And, yeah, feels like people are more interested in creating the next meme and and, you know, getting a hundred views on YouTube than they are and actually solving some of these problems.

So you you were on George Stefanopoulos’s program over the weekend talking about the the January sixth committee, and and he asked you, you know, the obvious question, which is what happens next, so I’ll ask you the same obvious question. What what happens next? Are there going to be more hearings? And when is the report going to come out?

Yeah. So look, I I think it’s pretty safe to assume the report will be out probably sometime in December. This, you know, the committee from well, from a realistic perspective. And but also, we’re mandated to end by the end of this congress. Mhmm.

And that’s kinda part of the problem. We’re up against a clock. And So, yeah, I would expect that sometime in December that report comes out. There are some leads we are still pursuing, but I think we all have to understand you know, what we did on the committee. I I think the whole reason there is a Department of Justice investigation right now is because of the work we’ve done.

I think we have brought light to the problems, which is exactly what we’re supposed to do to show the American people where those vulnerabilities were, what happened. And and come up with fixes and we’re gonna work on some of those. But now what the torch truly is passed It’s passed now to DOJ from the criminal side and to the American people, like, you now, Congress can’t I mean, we’ve obviously gone about as much as we can do. Do you want somebody that’s gonna kind of repeat the things of the past? That’s your decision to make America, and we’ve pushed that to you.

So I think that’s where the committee is. An obvious question is, what if the president of the United States and the subpoena doesn’t come in? We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. He keeps acting like he wants to come in. We’ll deal with that.

We can. Yeah. And I’ll tell you about, Charles. I I heard somebody over the weekend. I think it was some more kind of say, well, it was dumb of them to, you know, to to bring him in now.

And she should have been the very first person they talked to. And look, I maybe a year ago could have seen that point. And now that I’m kind of like you know, crash course in prosecution. I look at this and I go, you can’t bring in the guide that’s the target of the investigation as the first witness because you have nothing to back that. You have nothing he can lie to you and you have no way to call him out.

So I think I think the problem is we’re just up against a clock at the end of the year. Yeah.

So what did you make of his fourteen page response? I mean, I I’m in the camp saying there’s there’s no way he is ever going to testify. You know, no way his lawyers are ever going to allow him to continue his lies under oath that’s not going to happen. But he did issue that fourteen page response. What did you make of

that? So first off, I typically I think I tend to agree with you that, you know, his lawyers are probably gonna say no. I won’t Repeat, though, it is the law that he shows up on the day we give him. So we’ll leave it at that. But the fourteen page note, look, everything about Donald Trump is like getting increasingly rambling and crazy.

I mean, that’s a thing. I really I mean, if you’d have taken some of the stuff he’s saying now, you know, whether it’s the Jews, you know, this kind of stuff, nobody thinks me. You know, this fourteen page diatribe even if you’d have gone if you go back in time two years, and Donald Trump, if you’d have said that two years ago, people were like, whoa, he’s gone off the deep end. I think we’re like the frog boil in the pot where it’s just getting slowly more crazy and slowly more unhinged and mentally unwell. That it doesn’t seem like anything’s changed.

That was nuts. And I think everything he does gets nutsier and longer.

I think

that’s an excellent point. And also, I was thinking about his his tweet about the Jews, you know, you know, better wise up before it’s it’s too late and the complete lack of any response. You look at that with any historical perspective of all of the years that folks on the right, including Bill Buckley, you know, spent pushing back against antisemitism, recognizing that antisemitism was a cancer on the right And the way that not that long ago, that other Republicans would have said, okay, we don’t wanna be associated with that. And now it’s like it’s just like a shrug. And you’re right.

This is like the boiling frog because all of this stuff is now being treated somehow like it’s normal. Like

in the

conventional wisdom just says, well, you’re not gonna get your undies in a bundle about this or anything. Are you? You’re not actually this is shouldn’t believe affect who you vote for or who you want doors because, right, this is the new normal. And inflation’s

high. Yeah. Inflation’s high. It’s a big deal. But here’s what I think drives me nuts about the media is they’ve gotten exhausted.

So — Yes. Exactly. — this thing comes out you know, at some point, Kevin McCarthy is gonna have, you know, access by media that’s not just Fox News, and and they’re gonna ask in theory, you know, like, let’s say he actually did, they would ask him this question. He would give some BS response. They know as BS.

And then they’d move on. And it’s like, what, there are so many people that go out and say in their statements. Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Donald Trump is our leader. He’s the leader that’s probably a party.

You can’t then turn around and ignore what he says because oh, there’s other issues. And let’s just move back. Now, he is the leader. If you wanna say Donald Trump is not the leader of the Republican Party, then I think you have leverage to, like, move on to different issues. Until you’re willing to say that, everything he says you have to respond to in the biggest failure in all this besides, you know, each member of Congress that represents seven hundred thousand people.

Seven hundred thousand people that you have a responsibility for. But the biggest failures are people like Elise Stefanoek, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Skolese, who do not have the courage in the face of potential power they can gain to simply lead people to the truth. And this is when you look back to, you know, a called a pre-nineteen thirty nine moment, whether it’s in the US, whether it’s in Germany or anything else. It always seemed like whatever the worst case scenario, there’s no way it would ever happen, but it just took the silence of so many people to let that frog boil to the point where all of a sudden, you know, we were in a pretty bad way. Well, and

that in one of the headlines in the New York Times this morning in there, the morning newsletter is Marjorie Taylor Green’s success demonstrates Trumpism hold over the Republican party. And the subject line in the email was Marjorie Taylor Green’s comeback. And again, speaking of the boiling frog, This woman is completely nuts. She is unhinged. She has engaged in every sort of woolly conspiracy theory, every sort of bizarre anti Semitic protocols of the elders of Zion, Jewish space laser, nuttiness, and yet she is her star is in the ascendancy right now in the Republican Party in the caucus of which you are still a member.

Yeah. And

what she’s gonna lead if, you know, Kevin actually becomes speaker. Mhmm. That’s not the end of this fight. She’s gonna own him. She’s gonna grab him by every place and direct him exactly where she wants to direct him.

And here’s I think here’s a shortcoming that some of the media has in understanding this. I was raised a kind of in that what’s called that apocalyptic kind of in time evangelical thought. Right? And I left it when I was in my twenties, but you know, that idea that we were always on the edge of the New World Order or the UN was even all the black helicopters. So what I have seen And this is why I’m out there, Iranian pastors, frankly, and priests and spiritual leaders.

There are members of Congress, and and Margaret Taylor Green is really good at this. And Donald Trump’s kind of learned it. You see it really well with people like General Mike Flynn, where they use that apocalyptic kind of in times revelation language in a way that If you’re not in that fault, you don’t understand it. If you’re in that, you know exactly what they’re saying. When there’s a discussion about globalism, globalism isn’t about an economic thought.

It’s not about the Jews even quote unquote. Mhmm. It is all about this belief that in the end times, there will be a one world government, and that one world government is run by the antichrist. So when they call you a globalist, Charlie, you are part of the Antichrist’s future movement. And that’s the problem is a lot of people don’t understand that language — No.

— but it resonates with You’re gonna round them to these voters. That’s right. Yeah. That’s right. And and that’s where pastors and priests and spiritual leaders have got us stand up on the pulpit and say, this is BS guys gonna fall forward.

So when you

say

this, what kind of feedback do you get? I mean, it

depends. It’s like if it’s, you know, something like Russ Moore, Right? He fully understands this. He’s out there. He he’s the guy that’s, like, admonishing pastors to do the same.

You know, my pastors understand it. But if you say it kind of out there, you know, I’m sure if you look at some of the comments on this podcast or if I went tweet something like it, The problem is people will look and say, yeah, that’s what a globalist would say. That’s what the Bilderbergs want you to say. I mean, you look at even things like, I’m part of the global economic what is young Americans for freedom thing or whatever. Mhmm.

And it and it that is now some new conspiracy that, you know, it’s some globalist new world order thing. I mean, this is the kind of stuff where when I think when you watch people like Michael Flynn or the my pillow guy or these kind of eccentric people will call them that are now mainstream. Just listen to some of that language and know what they’re saying.

This again is this extraordinary phenomenon of of watching people who’ve always been out there, but always been on the fringes now becoming part of the mainstream. And the mainstream either not being willing to push back against them or you use the word exhaust. And I do think that there’s a certain level of exhaustion. You see that in the media. It’s like, okay, we could report this again, but Okay.

Right. This is what it is. Can we just get back to the horse race? So speaking of which is a slight a slight digression, but I think you got a very interesting tweet this morning. Somebody who is writing from Keith wrote, am I the well, he says he’s Jay and Keith.

Am I the only one that finds it incredible that the GOP key. The party of Ronald Reagan is now aligned with Iran and Russia. Mhmm. And you tweeted back, I’ve been in the middle of it, and I’m still am blown away at how quickly it happened. I had to say, so talk to me about that.

It is it has happened incredibly quickly, and it is really stunning for any of us who have any historical perspective on these issues. Howard Bauchner:

Yeah, it really is. So this the guy is his his name is Jay and Keefe on on his footer. I’ve fallen for a while. He he’s a I think he’s a reporter, and he just writes a lot of kind of interesting things. And so I wake up this morning and go through my usual kind of anti Russia rant on Twitter.

And I see that. And it it hit me. Yeah. I I am sitting here shocked the same as Jay and Keith is, and I’ve been part of this. So I I look back, Charlie.

I would say it was even even when Donald Trump was in office, but kind of very early on. Mhmm. You had we had just Dana Rohbach. That was it. That was the only guy in the GOP that would have the the quote unquote courage or insanity to express any kind of Russian sympathy.

And I remember I would get into him we’d get into yellow matches on the committee over, you know, Vladimir Putin in Russia. And I would — Yeah. —

that was the one man pro Putin clock It was That was it. Right. That was it. Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

And you entered Tulsi Gabbard once once the side started liquidating people with chemical weapons. She liked them for some reason. But to watch go from one guy who, by all objective purposes, was a little nuts. And I liked Dana personally, but he’s nuts. On policy to now I mean, I have real worries.

So right now, until the end of December, I think Congress will still be very supportive of Ukraine. Right? We passed more money. What I worry about is when when probably the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives. And let’s say it’s a five or ten vote majority.

There’s this certainly enough people that love Vladimir Putin or still are buying into this whole Ukraine is corrupt. By the way, if you think Ukraine’s corrupt, look at Russia for God’s sakes, you know. That I think can slow up any budget help for for Ukraine and can simply go on doctor Carlson every night. And make up stories about eighteen chemical labs in Ukraine. This is just completely untrue and you can’t push back against it.

You can you can tweet that there’s not chem labs I can even go on Tucker and say there’s no Kim Labs. But if you wanna believe Tucker that there’s Kim at the labs, you can. And that’s what’s that’s what’s happened. And the vast a significant amount of Republicans are now pivoting to to those talking points because it helps raise money.

No. And they are pivoting and even worse, I think, as a leading indicator is watching what’s happening in right wing media about this where anti Ukraine sentiment is spreading, and it’s more and more aggressive. And you even have now the latest heartthrob of the right Elon Musk who’s really pushing appeasement of of Russia. And so you can see exactly where the momentum is on the right. And again, it is You have to be blown away by how quickly and decisively attack.

Can

I can I add something else to it? Like, let’s take even away from the Russia issue. Because I think, you know, I don’t I mean, that’s very important. But let’s let’s broaden this. When did the Republican party become the party of victims.

I mean, with everything Donald Trump, he’s a victim. He is supposedly the most powerful man ever. If you talk to anybody that is a is a Trump fan, yet he is the biggest victim of every circumstance. He can’t even take on the deep state for god’s sakes, and he’s the president of the United States. You know?

When did we become victims? When did we become the party that would look and say, Russia had to attack Ukraine because whatever as a nine reason, you know, when did we become, as I’ve heard you say, the blame America first crowd, Miss exactly what, you know, fifteen years ago, I’d be so angry at watching the left, which is anything that happens, Iraq, Afghanistan, it’s always the United States fault. That’s exactly what the right has become now. It’s blame America first for everything. And this idea that if we end up standing up to Russia, we’re gonna end up getting nuked to death because, gosh, we’re all just, you know, helpless here.

The United States military is the strongest military in the world let me tell you, Vladimir Putin is not gonna use a nuke. If he does, there’s a reason it’s gonna be a tactical because he wants to escalate, to deescalate there’s not gonna be a massive nuclear exchange. And we used to remember as a country that when you pull out your your Saks, so to speak, Nobody will stand up to the United States because they know when you say it, you mean it. We have become the party of blame America, of victims of helplessness, And what we’re telling our kids is you are just a victim of your circumstances. I am so blown away that that is my party now.

Well,

it’s it’s also you think about how, on the one hand, the right will say, we need to celebrate America, American exceptionalism. We are so wonderful. We need teach American history about, you know, how we are this, you know, we are the beacon of freedom. We are still the shining city on the hill, on the one hand. On the other hand, they’ve internalized the kind of what aboutism that we used to only see on the left, which is that, okay, well, you know, what about America?

I mean, America has of these goals. America

is

degenerate. America is depraved. You you might you remember, Donald Trump was asked one point well, Vladimir Putin kills people and he goes, well, you know, we kill a lot of people too that sort of, you know, which is amazing. The other thing is as you’re pointing out, this one’s deep. There’s no question.

I mean, this this is not just Donald Trump. This runs deep on the right. It’s going to it will survive Donald Trump. But there’s also something very specific about Donald Trump. You know, in in a Trump two point o presidency, you have to turn against Ukraine because Donald Trump was the guy that tried to — Right.

— blackmail and extort Vodimir Zelensky. You can’t on the same hand say, yes, Donald Trump, you know, wonderful president of the United States, but also we have a moral obligation to support Ukraine when in fact Donald Trump is the guy that tried to squeeze Zelensky. So there is this tremendous now incentive to demonize Zelensky whenever possible, which I see all the time now on social media.

Howard Bauchner: I think you’re right. And I think, look, it’s he has this great ability, I give him credit, to basically never ever have been wrong. Anything that happens, you know, he has the luxury of having no actual moral center. And and know, like, guilt if he if he lies. So he can always say, this would have been different or, you know, remember the old thing, like, Viator Putin would never have attacked if Trump was president.

You know, bullshit. But, you know, secondarily, you know and I want I don’t know if I’m jumping ahead, but — Yeah. — what I had brought out in the hearing about Afghanistan and the order that Donald Trump had actually signed. You know, these these Trump loyalists go out saying, and by the way, I wanna be very clear. I am extremely bitter at Joe Biden for how we left Afghanistan.

I am equally bitter at Donald Trump for the setup. Everybody is wrong in this case. But these people, whether it’s Mike Pompeo, who is now trying to remake himself again as talk and not the guy that went and negotiated a deal with the Taliban by cutting out the Afghan government, FYI, and then we wonder why the Afghan government didn’t stay. But what we showed and and the reason I showed this at the hearing was to say, you know, look, Donald Trump knew he lost. In fact, he was signing these terminal orders for Somalia and Afghanistan.

Well, let’s take that part aside. And just the fact, Johnny Mcatee, who’s a clown, went into Donald Trump’s office, Donald Trump said, I want all the troops out of Afghanistan by the time I am out of the presidency. Do not sit here and tell me Trump lovers that Donald Trump would have done anything different than Joe Biden because the only thing I’ve seen from Donald Trump is he’d have pulled out even quicker, even worse and you would have had more Afghan left behind because he demanded they be out immediately. So let’s let’s get past this notion that somehow Donald Trump is he has not. I give him credit for killing Soleimani.

It is about the only good thing he did on foreign policy. Well, one

more question about you. Before I wanna get back to something about the January sixth, the committee. Because right now, we’re watching all of these missile attacks and these these kamikazhi drone attacks from Iran on civilian populations in keep. You’d been in the center of a controversy earlier this year when you suggested that that we provide more air cover, that we declare a no fly zone. People are not talking about a no fly zone anymore, but should we be providing more air defense Ukraine.

And what form should that take? Yeah. I absolutely

that air defense is very complicated. It’s, you know, you have short, you have medium, you have long range. What what Ukraine needs a short and medium range air defense. If you think of things like the iron dome — Yeah. — or

the failing

system, which which we use, that’s more short range. That’s like rockets and everything else. And then you look at the kind of medium range defense systems. What you’re starting to see, I think, Europe provide for whatever reason the United States has said, we’re not gonna provide those. We’ll provide ammo for those.

You know, obviously, I don’t like that answer except maybe there is just an agreement that Europe’s gonna do a better job of that. Here’s what I think we need to be doing as well, though. So yes, we need to up the air defense for Ukraine to give them the ability to defend against these Iranian drones. The other thing, there is no way we should not be out there publicly supporting the opposition in Iran right now — Mhmm. — that is being killed.

That’s, you know, these women are going around without their jobs and getting killed for it. We need to be much more vocal about that because the Ayatollah in the government of Iran hates it when the US speaks up. It was the terminal mistake we made in the o nine thing as when Obama didn’t say anything about that. We need to be sanctioning areas that we have sanctioned Russia that may be still open with Ukraine. Since they have made the decision now to get involved in the war.

We need to make it clear to Israel. It’s time to get off the sidelines on this one. I understand that there are Russian Jews in Israel that have there is a complicated kind of political thing on this. And, you know, and Israel is concerned about the Russian presence in Syria. They’ll say that publicly, but it is time now to get off the sidelines because your Archie enemy, Iran, is now killing Ukrainians as well.

So I think those are all important things. And we keep getting super close. This is what kinda drives me a little nuts. Is I’ll get indications that they’re about to do it and they pull back, which is providing Ukraine with f sixteens. That’s not gonna happen tomorrow.

So if I if if Biden comes out and says we’re gonna give Ukraine f sixteens, it’s not like they’re gonna be delivered tomorrow and then an action in a week. It takes three or four months to train a fully trained MIG pilot on the differences between how to fly an f sixteen, how to employ the weapon systems The f sixteen is a multirole fighter, so it can do air to air and air to ground. So Ukraine needs those. They we should have started training some of their excess capacity pilots, which they have. We should have started training them months ago in anticipation of of giving them those aircraft.

I keep getting indications from people inside that we’re about to sign the deal with Ukraine and then somebody on the National Security Council pulls that back, always because they’re afraid of escalation. Look, If Russia wants us to escalate, they can provoke us to escalation. Russia is not interested in escalating they want us to think they’re interested in escalating. Eventually, Ukraine is going to have to have f sixteens they’re going to have to be on NATO standard military equipment because all of the old Soviet equipment in Eastern Europe has already been flushed through Ukraine. There is no more supply chain for Russian shells unless the, you know, the Russians abandoned more.

There’s no new supply chain for teeth for t eighty Russian tanks unless Russia abandons more. And there’s no new aircraft coming off the production line, you know, of MIGS or Sukhoi. So Let’s move forward now. Hopefully, this war is over by the time all these pilots are trained up, but they’re gonna need them anyway. It does sound like

we continue to engage in a little bit of self deterrence convincing ourselves not to do something because it might provoke the Russians well. Again, that is deterrence, but it’s deterrence that we’ve internalized to our I also you made a really interesting point about being more outspoken in in defense of the in support of the protests in Iran can’t think of any reason why it would not be in the United States’ interest, certainly the Biden administration’s interest, to be more vocal, to be more aggressive in in promoting these these the protests by by Iran’s women. Yeah.

I mean,

look, do we believe in freedom for women of on. I certainly hope so. I think we do. There have been women killed daily, killed by these security forces, children killed by these security forces, There’s no reason the government, our government should not be out there, publicizing these stories, shaming Iran, calling for freedom, calling for changes, particularly as well if Iran wants to continue to impress our allies in Ukraine.

Okay. Let’s change gears and go back to the January sixth committee, including one of the big questions that I had coming out of the hearing in which, you know, appear to be lingering we know what is going on with the secret service. One of your colleagues on the committee, Zolofgren, said yesterday on CNN, that the panel is gonna be asking a former secret service assistant director, Tony Ornato, to testify again. So talk to me about what the committee What questions you have about the Secret Service and the questions you’re asking going forward? Well,

so if you remember after the whole, which is really the dumbness issue, but what’s been seized on, you know, the Trump and the limos

owned

by Cassie Hutchinson and the sheet of her. There was, you know, quote unquote, secret service sources that said that never happened. Well, they were all at the time. Yeah.

Yeah.

And they were huge. Yeah. Yep. And they

were all Tony or Naho, Robert, and GOL, those guys. That’s who was that’s who the sources were. And then they, of course, never came in and talked to us. And as we’ve gotten more and more testimony, you saw somebody else confirm that it was a well known story that was being told out there and all this kind of stuff. There’s a lot of, I believe, areas where we probably have not been told the truth.

And and so there could be potential for, you know, obviously perjury, that kind of stuff. And look, we we still haven’t gotten a good answer as to why all of those text messages were deleted after preservation requests for those messages. Preservation is just like, hey, keep these because we may need them. Came from Congress and the inspector general. There’s a, you know, part of it could be some of it, just some view of the Secret Service of privacy, which I can understand, like, you know, protect the needs to know that his agents aren’t gonna go say everything that happens because, you know, otherwise, he’s gonna try to shake the agents.

But Congress has oversight on this. Congress, particularly on this committee, has a responsibility, and for whatever reason, there’s been some stuff hidden. Look, I mean, you have a secret service agent that ended up getting a leave of absence from the secret service to have a political appointment from Donald Trump who then returned to the Secret Service and then retired when it came out that we might wanna talk to him again. I mean, it’s if there’s really is a weird cultural thing occurring there. Plus, I don’t know anything about this personally, but there was the there was somebody that had recently testified that I think it was Enrique Tario had a contact in the US secret service.

Yeah. I was I was I was keeping guy. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, look, I there’s more information we need. We are up against this clock issue.

But I’m gonna tell you, even as we’re putting out the report and writing the report, we’re gonna chase these leads down. And the other thing is, yes, you know, Steve Bannon is being recommended, what, a year and or six months in Chase. Six hundred

thousand

dollar. And we so we have an ability to kind of get justice there. Justice has a much stronger ability to get justice. And I think they’re pursuing all of this pretty hard. Well,

just just to underline the point that you made on on the secret service members who said that Cassidy Hutchinson was lying about what happened in that limousine on January sixth. They claim that they would speak to you, but they won’t do it. They have not come in. So once again, we see this interesting phenomenon of people willing to say things. On social media and or to reporters in private, but when they’re challenged to say it under oath, suddenly they become very reticent.

They do. And and think about it, though, it’s brilliant because the only media that you really need to convince is the right wing media. And you know, if you talk to the average kind of Fox News viewer about this thing, they’ll say, well, the secret service actually rebutted our statement. They won’t know the fact that it was anonymously, they won’t come in and testify, and it was the people that made those statements. I mean, that’s just probably live in different realities, and that’s that’s a deeper conversation that how to get back to to where we can actually have a shared set values again, but that is the thing that actually probably concerns me even more than, you know, Donald Trump coming back from the political debt.

Thanks, Kevin McCarthy. Well,

as as people may have noticed, we’re also in a midterm election cycle. And since we’ve we’ve sort of commented on a certain media exhaustion or media king just two two things. I wanted to bounce off you. I thought it was very interesting that at the debate on was it on Friday night, I’ve lost track of time now with Hirschel Walker and whatnot. The conventional wisdom is is the, well, you know, Hirschel Walker, you know, cleared the incredibly low bar.

I mean, he he didn’t he didn’t completely meltdown, so he did what he had to do, which is kind of, I think, the laziest kind of journalism. But I also thought it was interesting, like, wait. Know, there was also that moment where he whips out that fake Sheriff’s ban.

And — Yeah. —

noting, I like the guys that back the blue And I’m sorry, Adam, it’s completely fake. It’s obviously fake. You know, you wanna talk about a Saturday night live, you know, skit. That should have been the skit. Saturday Night Live did a better job in doing a parody of that than most of the mainstream political pundits.

What do you think? I mean, a

hundred percent. I mean, literally,

it was look, as long as Hershel Walker doesn’t grab his pants. Right? Mhmm. And so literally all I had to do is not crap his parents. Yes.

Oh, wonderful,

fantastic. Mhmm. I mean, it wasn’t look, I have a a special deputy card. I got two,

and it was kind of like, Like, you have no real power. He is

a special honorary deputy, which he acts as a real law enforcement officer. That’s like something that a sheriff gives you as a way to show friendship. It’s almost like when

the people drive around with that, like, I support the state — Yeah. — to say. And then now they fake their story. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, dude, like, this is the problem. It’s America, and I and I smell it just back. I’m like, guys, Like, even Hornock versus Hersha Walker. Hornock is a much better guy.

I’m not a huge Hornock fan. America you’ve got so many people in this country, you deserve way better than the people you’re putting forward. I mean, you know, if it’s gonna be Joe Biden against Donald Trump, like, Come on America, you can do so much better than this. I

don’t know. Let’s talk about Utah for a minute. Another one of the strange media kinks is on I guess the conventional wisdom is absolutely baffled by why won’t Mitt Romney do what every other Republican senator is doing and endorse his colleague Mike Lee for reelection. I no. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Mike Lee was actively backing and promoting the big lie and maybe Mitt Romney doesn’t want to, you know, put on the tribalist, flunky Jersey to go along with all that.

But that’s like, what’s what is wrong with with Mitt Romney in in Utah that he’s not willing to to do that. And again, this is this the the default setting is, you know, yep, So Glenn Youngkin, you know, one of the good Republicans goes any campaigns for Kerry Lake and people go, well, that’s that’s just what Republicans do. Right? Yeah. But Mitt Romney stands up against I’m sorry, will Mike at least get in bed with Mike Lee?

So you’re involved in that. You’ve actually endorsed Evan McMullen in that race. So what’s going on there? Look, Mike Lee

is you know, he used to kind of pretend like to be this this sort of Ted Cruz Act lied who, you know, knows the constitution and blah blah blah. Look, if you’re if you actually care about a constitution, you’re not gonna support Donald Trump. I mean, I I gotta tell you there’s just no way. And Evan McMullen, I’ve known him And when he told me he was gonna run, I’m like, do it, man. I mean, obviously, it’s a very unique situation.

The democrats have backed him I think I think Evan can win. In fact, I’m going in a couple days to campaign for him in Utah because it is important for us to show even if he loses which, you know, he really was probably gonna win. I think he can win. But this shows that we talked about that unnatural alliance or kind of uneasy alliance between the left and and, you know, normal people on the right to defend democracy. So this is an example of you know, it’s not like the people on Twitter that say, hey, Adam, thanks for the January sixth stuff, but you voted against the Voting Rights

Act.

It’s like, okay. You don’t wanna hear why I voted against that, and plus the fact that I would vote for it if it came up again. But the fact is you just wanna find everything we differ on And this is a case where Democrats, independents, and normal Republicans have come together to say, Okay. Yeah. Maybe Evan was pro life and this person’s pro choice, but Evan is better than Mike Lee.

And so I think it’s gonna be an intriguing race I’m excited. So I endorsed him through my country first movement, which is country one s t dot com. We also endorsed a number of Democratic secretaries of state And of course, the Pennsylvania and Arizona governor’s race as we endorse Democrats. Because look, you know, secretaries of state, they’re not really, like, ideological, but there are people running for Secretary of State in some of these states that have made it clear that they are election deniers. That’s gonna throw this country into real deep chaos.

We have got to have this unnatural alliance. You talk about that all the time with people like Will and, you know, it’s been inspiring for me, but I think Americans are gonna have to take a look at this in the long term and say, that’s how we’re gonna fix this democracy. It’s not gonna

be tribalist. It can’t be in this whole notion that you have to back the party no matter, you know, what. It leads the normal Republicans to embrace people who are you know, clearly anti Democratic. And I look, you you’ve endorsed already in the you know, you put your money where your mouth is in Arizona. And I have to say that among the things that that makes me, like, at least pessimistic in the short term, I’m sorry, to bring this up on a Monday, is the fact that I don’t know.

Carrie Lake could win. Looks like she’s likely to win. You’ve endorsed Katie Hobbs. I don’t know how you feel about this. I think she’s making a terrible mistake by refusing to debate Kerry Lake.

It’s it’s just not

strong.

If

you’re gonna fight for democracy, You have to freaking fight for it. Right? Which means showing up.

That’s right. I mean, look, Kerry Lake is a very good politician. She’s also pulling out really insane things. She’s an election denier. Katie Hobbs has nothing to hide from in a dead I’m really disappointed that she’s hiding And I think it’s gonna that could cost her even one or two points.

And that

could be enough. Yeah.

Absolutely. So you

were on yesterday morning and you were talking about that these lies will go away, but as you point out, they’re not gonna go away organically. And I would like to think that you’re right that in the long term, it does. But when you have so few quote unquote responsible political leaders willing to take a stand and you have so many voters who not only are, you know, who not only look at what happened on January sixth, they’re not appalled to buy it, but actually go, yeah, we’d like to vote for people who celebrate that. I mean, that’s That’s a dark moment. I I think everything you say

is right. I think we can’t just sit back and relax and hope this happens, but This is an emotional moment. Everybody has invested in their worldview. Their worldview is very personal. It we’ve gone through really rough elections.

At some point, that kind of emotion will pass so people can look at it with a little clearer eyes. And secondarily, I don’t I don’t to say this just kinda so harshly. But this will be as generations pass away — Mhmm. — and new generations come in, I mean, look, my kid who’s nine months old, he is not going to believe that the FBI did January sixth. So maybe it’s twenty years till that generation is kind of, you know, voting and understanding.

I think it’s just a matter of time till that kind of crazy moment passes, the question is, what is the damage in the process? And let me say this to every election denier out there. Please do not ever repeat anywhere near me that you want to leave America a country better off than the one you inherited. If you’re out there, denigrating the political system, saying that it’s impossible to live with people that think differently than you. And and saying that the election was completely stolen, and Donald Trump is basically the equivalent of Jesus Christ.

Because I’m gonna tell you unless you think somehow that the other side is gonna completely collapse, you’re not leaving your kid a better off country because The best thing about America is we teach our young people how to actually live with people that are different than you in a peaceful way. That’s what we’ve always used as a bragging point. It’s been our shining city on the hill thing, and that’s the beauty of our democracy. So please don’t come here and say, you know, you’re not vlogging me if you don’t believe like me because I wanna leave my kid a country better off because I don’t think you wanna truly understand what America is. Adam

Kinzinger, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. You’ve been on many times, and I gotta tell you, I think this was the best one yet. Oh, wow. Thank you. They’re just getting better and better.

So thank you so much. You bet. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Seres. I’m Charlie Sykes. Thank you for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast.

We’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll do this all over

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