Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger (IL) stated Monday on CNN that former President Trump and the GOP continuing to say the 2020 presidential election was not real and downplaying the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was causing a “real possibility” of a civil war in the country.
Kinzinger said, “We are in a real dire moment. I believe if we do not wake up and recognize that it is not just a performance to tell people we lie, when we say that elections were stolen, this really goes to the survival of this nation and in the form, we know it. It is very serious.”
Anchor Wolf Blitzer stated, “How dangerous is it for the GOP to whitewash January 6th and say it ‘legitimate political discourse?’”
Kinzinger said, “Oh, it is very dangerous, and it is not just — it is in a word more intense than dangerous, I would say that.”
He added, “It is not a far-fetched thought, Wolf, to believe that some militia does something and then some counter-militia, and then we are in a civil war. I never would have said we would end in that position, but I now think it is a very real possibility that we must be wide-eyed so we don’t have this happen again.”
Blitzer said, “Am I hearing you, correctly Congressman? You are afraid of a possible civil war in America?”
Kinzinger said, “I do. And one year ago, I would have answered no, not a chance. But I have come to see that when we don’t see each other as Americans, when we start to separate into different cultural identities, when we start to basically give up what we believe so we could be in a group, and then when you have leaders that abuse that faithfulness of that group to violent ends, as we witnessed on January 6, we would be naïve to believe it is not possible here.”
He added, “We must look at this and walk in and say, we can have differences, but we need to bridge the differences, because our basic survival is at risk.”
