Defending Democracy Amid Division with Adam Kinzinger

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

NBCNews

News, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“You basically have one vote in 2024. Do you support democracy or do you not support democracy? And no other issue in my mind matters,” says our guest this week. Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, found himself a pariah of sorts after he voted to impeach Donald Trump, following the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Kinzinger was one of two Republicans tapped to be on the January 6th committee after the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He stepped away from politics this year and recently authored “Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country,” a memoir all about his life and political career. Kinzinger joins WITHpod to discuss the transformation of the Republican Party, crossing political lines during the House Impeachment vote, why he feels Trump avoids in-person confrontation, preserving American democracy and more.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I want to see for 2024 what I am calling an uncomfortable alliance.
0:11.2	You basically have one vote in 24. Do you support democracy or do you not
0:14.4	support democracy? And no other issue in my mind matters than that. And so I think
0:19.6	you're seeing these kind of, I'll call them the Biden Republicans.
0:23.4	And I'll tell you a little of this stuff is,
0:25.7	you know, you grow up a hardcore Republican
0:28.2	thinking that the intentions of the left
0:30.9	are bad intentions. And when you start to realize, when I start to see the left are bad intentions and when you start to realize when I start to see the
0:34.5	left as the defenders of democracy when I start to see the left as the defenders of
0:39.2	Ukraine for God's sake the people that will actually take on Russia, it has softened my view of the left
0:44.8	because all of a sudden I'm like, their motivations are actually pretty good. They're not bad people.
0:57.0	Hello and welcome to Why is this happening with me your host Chris Hayes. I am speaking to you and this is going to be a little slightly dated by the time you hear it
1:06.8	but bear with me because it's evergreen. I'm speaking on the day that the Republican
1:11.7	conference has finally after three weeks decided on a new
1:15.7	Speaker of the House, a Louisiana Republican by the name of Mike Johnson who is pretty hard right
1:21.1	sort of down the line,
1:22.5	very, very conservative lawmaker.
1:24.9	And who knows maybe by the time you heard this,
1:27.4	something that's blown up and there's another crisis,
1:29.7	but I think we're relatively safe.
1:31.7	And I think that one of the things, there was a lot of back and forth in this bizarre, you know, spectacle of this leaderless three weeks.
1:39.0	But one of the kind of defining points was the influence of Donald Trump in the party. of
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