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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

Adam Kinzinger is a six-term Republican member of Congress, but there are a lot of long-term members of Congress.

What distinguishes Kinzinger, what has made him notable particularly during this dark period we just lived through after the November election, was that he put his career in safety at risk to stand up to extremism and a president of his own party.

I sat down with him yesterday to hear that history through his words. Here's that conversation.

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Congressman Adam Kinzinger, it's great to see again. We did a podcast some years back.

I'm not going to rehearse everything that we talked about. Then anyone who wants a really good background on Adam Kinzinger and his life history should refer back to that.

But you've lived a lot lately. That was a pre-insurrection. Now we're supposed to be in a certain direction.

Yeah, and everything leading up to it. You know, there was a brilliant piece in the Washington Post today that was based on an interview with you.

And among the many things that were great about it was your description of that day, January 6th, and the insurrection.

And let's just start there because I was struck by two things. One is that you brought a gun to work that day.

I mean, not to the floor of the house, but to your office and to the Capitol complex, which was unusual.

You're a military man. We'll talk about that. And you warned your wife who works for vice president Pence not to come to work that day.

And I'm wondering what you knew that made you have such a sense of foreboding about what was going to happen that day.

So my wife had actually, she quit with Pence. She was at DHS as an assistant secretary.

I actually wasn't working anymore. So I told her though, you know, because she travels now back and forth with me.

And I told her, initially I didn't even wanted to come to DC. And she wasn't going to have any of that. So I told her to stay at home.

And I'll tell you, this is none of this was a surprise. None of it. I mean, I've been really kind of researching conspiracy theories because for me as a Republican, I think it's the most corrosive thing to our party currently.

And so all you got to do is look at Twitter. And Twitter was talking about, you know, that there's going to be violence.

We're going to take back the capital and you look at like QAnon and what these people believe. And look, it's not your rational. If you truly believe that the government is run by Satanist, Betafiles and not, you know, we the people.

If you truly believe that, then a reaction like deaths, not entirely unexpected. And so I just knew it. In fact, I had a couple media things I said I predicted violence.

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