Adam Kinzinger on "Our Better Angels"
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Don Jr. needs to do some upper body exercises because every time I see him, like his neck, and I'm only saying this because they would do the same thing to us, by the way. His neck like kind of continues down and his shoulders slope at a 45 degree angle. I'm like, dude, do like eight shoulder exercises occasionally and you would look normal. That's all you got to do. Anyway, maybe, you know, maybe it's all the whatever he's doing. Your task will not be an easy one.

Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America, any conservative America, the United States of America. Good night, and good luck. Hey folks, and welcome back to the Lincoln Project Podcast. I am your host, as always, Rick Wilson. As we are recording this, there are a mere five days to go in this election, and damn, it's getting hot.

I am joined today by my friend, by a guy I consider a national treasure, Adam Kinzinger, former congressman, former member of the January 6th Committee, and now one of the leaders of Republicans for Harris, a guy who is out there swinging for the fences because like we, he understands that electing Donald Trump again is the end of American democracy, and electing Kamala Harris is the start of something very new. Adam, thank you for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it. I've never been called a national treasure. That's great.

Look, it's been intense. It's been very intense. Look, I was out and I've done Pennsylvania. I've done some stuff here in Texas.

So, yeah, I mean, it's it's just everything feels like it's on the edge, you know, obviously. And it is. But I there's part of me that really thinks maybe just maybe. And I don't want to get people's hopes up, but like maybe there's a little undersampling of Democratic enthusiasm. But there's a lot of dark energy on the Republican side, too. There is. There is. There's a lot of there's a lot of, you know, criticism.

Trump hottie kind of voters out there in his base that'll crawl over broken glass to vote for the guy. But I do think the early vote numbers, you know, are really starting to show some some real motion, I think, and opening up a harder Election Day equation for Trump, because we're seeing these early voters with Democrats dominating and women dominating in the early voting.

Yeah, I hope you're right. And it seems like you are. And, you know, you see some mixed numbers sometimes or mixed messages where they're like, oh, you know, Nevada looks a little weak or, you know. But look, and I think some of that is just natural over time. Republicans, you know, in the past never voted early. Now they're doing that a little more, particularly in North Carolina, because, you know, it's

After getting hit with the hurricane, it's easier to do it that way. So but I do think there is definitely not seeing less Democratic enthusiasm than Republican. And the question is, is there more? And I think, you know, when you're sitting here and your motivation is vengeance or your motivation is saving your country, that's probably going to motivate you a little bit more.

I think saving the country is a higher calling to people. It makes them, you know, get out of bed in the morning instead of just stewing and sitting on Twitter all day, which, you know, God knows you and I have occasionally sat on Twitter all day. But it is – I think that higher – better angels thing is calling to a lot of Americans right now where they see that there's a future that –

You know, it's interesting to me because it's there. I've heard from progressives who are like, oh, my God, she's being too centrist. But if you've got a coalition that ranges from Bernie Sanders over to Liz and Dick Cheney and you and me, I got to tell you, I think that's a pretty big coalition. And I think she's probably landing a lot more in the sweet spot out there. Are you hearing that from some of the Republicans you're talking to? Yeah. I

Yeah, I mean, look, I think she's landing in the sweet spot. All you have to do is look at her DNC speech, and I always said you could almost like make – that could almost have been a John McCain speech, particularly when you're talking about like –

Sure.

she's going to centrist or whatever. Look, you have a choice. And really, I mean, take a pick. You can either have a pure democratic party that loses and it may only last another few years when authoritarian Trump takes over or you have a winning coalition. And the problem is, Rick, as you know, the Republicans have played that we're going to get rid of the impure people in our party. And yes, they've won an election or so, but they've been on a losing streak and they may continue to be on a losing streak after this.

Yeah, look, I mean, it's almost certain they're going to lose the House. I mean, it's going to be close. It's not going to be a big majority for the Democrats, but they are there. The Republicans are playing D across the board on House races right now in any competitive seat. They may win the Senate, but it's going to be you know, it's going to be a very close run thing.

And they've lost a thousand seats nationally. Folks, there are about 7,500 elected officials in the country. They've lost a thousand seats since 2016. It's not working out for them the way they thought. And no one's going to have a moment, I think, if you're a Republican –

who's not sunk into MAGA where they go, wow, this has been so great for the party. This has really worked out great for us. We're now locked in with Vladimir. We're now the party of Putin. Yeah. And you think about the fact that even in 2016, we count that as a victory for Republicans. It wasn't a victory for Republicans because yes, Donald Trump won. He won by our laws. I'm not questioning his victory, but he lost the popular vote. So he lost popular vote then. It would

be amazingly shocking if Trump somehow won the popular vote this time. I think he's going to lose that pretty handily. So this is not a winning coalition. And yes, we want to get back to where there is a kind of pure and real conservative movement again, which doesn't exist now. There's nothing conservative about the GOP. But in the meantime, if we want to preserve this democracy we have, you have to do it this way.

by this, what I call the uncomfortable coalition between the sane right, the center and the left. And that's the only way to defeat these folks. And we've got to keep this together. And by the way, keep it together even past November 5th. You know, Adam, that's a point I haven't heard a lot of people making yet, but I think it's so right. It's so on target. Once this is done, this coalition, I mean, for folks like us, you know, ex-Republicans, exiled Republicans, however you want to phrase it,

We know that it's not just – nobody's going to call us on Wednesday and go, OK, we made a mistake. Come back in, guys. Help us fix things. The authoritarian stuff is wired into the MAGA party, and we're going to have to unwind that for a while. And it's going to have to cost some Republicans their seats. It's going to be – you know, Payne is the best teacher in politics. So I think it's going to be a minute before –

before we can take our foot off the gas of trying to stamp out this authoritarian populist craziness that Trump brought into the party. Yeah, it's going to be the case because, look, it's...

let's say Trump loses, let's, you know, please God. So he loses. Well, what happens next? Is there this real awakening of like, you know, oh gosh, we went too far. Some maybe, but look, when you've had to compromise so much to get to the kind of person you are today, it takes a long time to look and say, okay, what we did was wrong. Well, you're never going to admit that humans don't admit mistakes. They don't admit fallacy. So what's going to happen is JD Vance or

Vivek Ramaswamy or somebody like that is going to inherit the mantle of Trumpism. And while Trump has a specific superpower like this unique evil thing he does, the reality is he's articulate in his own way. We have to give him that. But J.D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy, as an example, are articulate in the way that we all define articulate.

And it's going to be tough for us. We're going to have to continue to push back against that narrative and against that thing. And the question is, do we want to rebuild this coalition in two years when we need it? Or do we want to just keep it steamrolling so that we can steamroll these guys? And that's what I want to do. You know, I think that's a really good point because J.D. Vance and Vivek and and

Not really DeSantis. He's not that graceful. But there are these guys who could go and sit in a boardroom somewhere, who could go and pitch with the language of the meritocracy. There are these Ivy League educations, and they're smart, and they don't sound crazy on the first scan.

So I think that those people will try to, to, to keep it going. I think there's going to be a civil war between those people and the Trump family. Like the boys are going to want to get into politics next. And, and it's going to be, that's going to get ugly. I think for, for, for the people that want to take the mantle after Trump, Don jr is going to want to rise up and take that job because he thinks he's a Prince. I mean, that's right. That's a hundred percent right. This is a, this is a, uh,

patriarchy or a family business to them and uh and you know look don jr by the way can i just say quick aside don jr needs to do some upper body exercises because every time i see him like his neck and i'm only saying this because they would do the same thing to us by the way

His neck like kind of continues down and his shoulders slope at a 45 degree angle. I'm like, dude, do like eight shoulder exercises occasionally and you would look normal. That's all you got to do. Anyway, maybe, you know, maybe it's all the, whatever he's doing, but like,

You know, yeah, that's exactly what they're going to try. And, you know, are they going to be able to stuff down the people that stand up against them? Maybe, maybe not. I do think there is like a unique fear that people have of Donald Trump, the old guy, and that they won't have of Donald Jr. But that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. I never thought Trump would come back after January 6th. You know, maybe you did, but I never imagined this.

You know, I got in so much shit, Adam, in November of 21. I wrote a piece and I said, Donald Trump will be the nominee. He is coming back. Don't think for a minute that they're going to throw this guy over the side. And I had people, I had Democrats yell at me. I had Republicans yell at me. I had reporters yell at me like, oh, that's bullshit. He's never coming back. It's over. You got to move on. I'm like, okay, see what happens. It's

I am Rick Stradamus when it comes to predicting what Donald Trump is going to do, because he is, you know, uniquely poisonous. He's going to still pick nominees for congressional and statewide races for a while too, right? Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Until he

until he finally has one too many cheeseburgers. He's not, let's say he loses again, please. And he's going to, he's going to want to maintain his hold on the Republican party. And you know, the question is who's going to stand against him? Because here's the thing, let's say he loses again,

And I don't know the answer to this. Hopefully I'm wrong here. But like he's now probably going to be on Fox News every other day. Fox will keep him because he drives ratings like crazy and obviously they care about his profit motive. And he's now going to start having his own Donald Trump approves or Donald Trump disapproves and this kind of stuff. And it's through that fear that

Utilization of fear. It's like I always use the example, you know, Rick Wilson or Adam Kinzinger or Liz Cheney. I hate that I referred to myself in the third person, but you get politically executed and it scares everybody else that's sitting there watching it happen. And, you know, you only have to have a few political executions until you have control again. Yeah. And and.

After 2018, I remember I was on a call one day with some friends of mine who were working for doing some stuff for McConnell. They're like, we're going to do we're going to pick all the candidates for next year. And from now on, we're not letting Trump pick the candidates anymore for the Senate. Sure shit. He still picks all the candidates for the Senate.

So I don't think that goes away. I think you're right. That doesn't go away. Look, that's I think that's the truth. And, you know, there's always this I remember 2018 or even maybe 2014 was this big like resurgence of the establishment, which felt great. And then that lasted a whole once. And so, yeah, that's it's the reality is we're going to have to fight this through. And I think that's that's our point to our Democratic friends is I get it. You may not agree with us on all issues. That's a luxury to disagree on issues because we're kind of in survival mode right now.

You may not realize it, but every minute of every day, you're enjoying the most important freedom. The freedom that's brought to you by the First Amendment. You can speak your mind, vote how you choose, wear what you want, get your opinions out there for free, even if it's unpopular. You can put a sign on your front lawn that says, vote for Bigfoot, someone you can believe in. You can pray to the God of your choice or don't.

You have the right to be with the people that think like you do. You have the right to tell the government what you think about its policies, whether you love them or hate them. They are freedoms that let you be you. And they're all brought to you by the First Amendment. Learn more at freedomforum.org. One thing I'm noticing, and I don't know if you're picking up on this...

My phone has started to buzz again with people I haven't talked to in three or four or five years. A few of them. And I'm getting a lot of the, I can't say it in public, but I'm going to vote for her. I don't know if you're getting the same sort of thing yet from people, but I have noticed a dramatic uptick in that in the last month.

Yeah, I have too. And I think you're going to see a, you know, I think, what is it? Biden got like 8% or something like that of Republicans. You guys did great work on that. If we can go above that, I mean, that's where the, you know, I'm not a pollster, but like polling is, I guess, technically a science, but it's an art form in that you've got to make predictions about what, you know, what percent of Republicans are going to turn out, you know, all this kind of stuff.

And so I don't think it's reflecting. We're kind of dealing with, again, my hope, and it feels like this, we're dealing with the opposite of 2016 where people were voting for Trump and not admitting it. Now I think they're going to vote for Harris and not admit it. And it doesn't take that many people. But I've gotten the same experience you have, people that either call and say at least that they're not going to vote for Trump, even if they write somebody in. I'm to the point now where I'm like, fine, write somebody in. At least it's half a win.

But, you know, I would encourage everybody, of course, to actually take the step and vote for her. Yeah, I think that's right. And one of the things that I would say that if I was going to categorize these people, the majority of them that are getting in touch with me now are come out of what I think of as like national security conservatives.

Like the evangelical guys, they're gone. That's done. But these are like national security conservatives. They're uncomfortable about Ukraine. They're uncomfortable about how weird he is about Kim Jong-un. They're uncomfortable about the way he talks about the nuclear. That's been what I've seen as like a big cohort of the professional Republican types that I'm hearing from. Former elected officials, consultants, lobbyists, whatever.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's a group of those folks that are kind of like – that understand. Look, I mean if you are like me, frankly, and I became a Republican because of defense issues. I mean I saw eye to eye on a lot of other issues. But because of defense issues, like this is the one moment where you're going to be able to –

Completely throw the world order that you've grown to appreciate on its head if Donald Trump wins. And look, we've always had disagreements on tax rates, disagreements on abortion, disagreements on every issue. Those are going to continue regardless of who's president. What we can't regain is America's role in the world anymore.

And what we can't regain is Ukraine like actually being able to defend itself against Russia if at any point it capitulates and Russia takes over. We're not going to be able to replay that again. So I've also heard from a few evangelical types that are kind of waking up to this, but generally that cohort is lost, I would agree. Yeah, a couple of them that I've talked to have been – a couple of evangelicals I've talked to have been –

one guy was kind of really blunt about it. He goes, I got what I wanted. I got Roe overturned, but now he's kind of creepy. I'm like, Oh, he wasn't creepy, creepy enough for you before, but you got what you wanted. So, but long story short, like the discomfort level he's putting his own people through is rising. It's harder for these, for candidates in particular, it's harder for them to play defense. It's harder for them to, you know, lose their minds. Um,

You know, every time he goes out and says something crazy. But I do think, you know, look, Madison Square Garden, to my mind, I want to get your thoughts on that. To me, Madison Square Garden was sort of the icing on the cake about what we think about Trump. And it happened at the very, very end of the campaign. Not a great look. You know.

It's interesting because the political kind of side of me, let's just take away from my moral belief that Trump is unqualified. I'm like, OK, if I had to come in, if I was working for the devil and had to come in and help Donald Trump win, it's so easy for him to bring this campaign home. He could have had a normal rally, stuck to the teleprompter and people – his bar is so low where people would have been like –

Oh my God. See, he's reformed because once he read a teleprompter, but they can't help themselves because he is so addicted to that adulation from the base. And that adulation comes from racist stuff. It comes from everybody knows the only reason he picked Madison, Madison square garden was a wink and a nod to the white nationalists. Now we can't prove that. Sure. But come on, like Madison square garden, let's be honest. And so that's exactly why he's done it. And, and, you know, by the way, all these kids,

candidates that are like, ask these questions. You know, do you agree with Donald or with the comedian quote unquote statement about, you know, Puerto, Puerto Rico being an island of trash? I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico.

I would say this to any media people listening. Whenever you interview these folks, continue to ask them the same question. Do not deviate from that question until they give you an answer. And they can say they agree or they disagree, no matter what. Fine. Say, I am not coming off of this question until you give me a yes or no answer. Do you agree? And then if they abruptly in the interview, the next person to interview. And by the way, these guys need media so bad that eventually they will have to answer that question. But don't let them get away with not answering it.

Yeah, I think that's so right. And I think that's been a failure mode in the media is a Trump supporter who cleans up and wears a suit and doesn't like drool on himself will go on TV. They'll ask him one gotcha and then he'll lie. Then they'll move on to the next question.

And I find that – I mean that to me is always like – I can't – like CNN has become basically unwatchable when Scott Jennings is on the air because he can get asked a serious question. He lies about it and they move on and ask – then they respond to his predicates. So it's sort of a – I think that's – I think you're right. That is a – that is a – to my mind, a real issue. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. And look, you know, I'm a CNN guy, so whatever. But I'll say the Scott Jennings thing, like it's just the faces he makes, too. It's like, look, I understand that everybody's got a role and I don't begrudge anybody that particularly as a campaign consultant that goes on and says like, you know, look, I, you know, I'm getting paid to do this fine. Like,

I don't agree with that because of, you know, people like you and I, what we've sacrificed for this, but I get it. I don't agree with it, but I get it. But it's like the condescending faces, like, and I try not to do that. And I, and I've, I've been guilty of it sometimes, even, you know, a couple of days ago, I was on with David Urban and I kind of went off on him, but. Oh, I've rolled my eyes a few times. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it is, I think that is something that, that I think the media has to have a reckoning after this. Like,

If we beat him next Tuesday, and I think we will, I think the media is going to have to have a reckoning like, did we play a little too close to the edge on authoritarianism here? Did we run too many risks in the course of this period between 2020 and 2024?

normalizing and sane washing and minimizing what it happened to Donald Trump and what happened because of Donald Trump to this country. I think there's going to have to be a lot of people that look hard in the mirror and respond to that in changing the way they cover candidates. And I'm not asking them to cover Democrats with no rigor. I want everybody to have rigorous coverage.

I just don't want people to look at authoritarianism and go, ah, that's just Trump. It's just being Trump. It's just his thing. Don't worry about it. Because I think we should worry about it. I do too. And, you know, the thing that concerns me is like, I get the human condition, which the human condition is you can only be out, like you can be numbed to outrage, right? And so you continue to get this idea of like, okay, Donald Trump said this, Donald Trump said this. And it's like, yeah, I know. And, you know, and a news organization's got to be careful to not numb people.

But there is a civic question to this, which is, OK, if you're going to judge Kamala Harris by certain standards, like saying, oh, she hasn't given enough specificity on her tax plan. OK, Donald Trump's tax plan is to what? Flirt with getting rid of all income taxes. He doesn't have a tax plan.

plan. He doesn't know what he stands for for anything. So to sit here and say Kamala Harris hasn't reached this bar, but then Donald Trump gets a pass because he's effing insane. Like that's, that's a problem. I get that you can't stoke outrage every day, but there's a problem with the double standard.

It is. It is. And I think that that has been one of his superpowers in his entire time on the national stage is that, oh, it's baked in the cake. Oh, that's just Trump being Trump. Take him seriously, but not literally. All those things added up to this sort of superpower. I want to talk to you a little bit about as you see Kamala Harris campaigning in the last few weeks, you've seen it more up close than most.

What is your take on her as a candidate out there in the field and connecting with people? Well, look, I'll say this. The only criticism I would have for the campaign, and I want to say this because I think it's important for the long term. Nothing can change in a week, but I think when you're looking long term, Democrats have been reaching out a lot to women. Look,

you're winning women, okay? And you're going to win women. I think they've got to do a better job of reaching out to men. And they're losing an entire generation of men under the age of 25. And part of that is we need to put out a view of healthy masculinity because in the absence of any view of masculinity, they're being drawn to this toxic masculinity. But that's a long-term project. In terms of Kamala herself,

Look, I met with her, I don't know, a week or two ago, and I got to tell you, I was struck by her genuineness. She is genuinely like when I talk about Ukraine or I would talk to her about whatever issue, you could read – I mean I'm a good judge of people. You can read in her eyes that this isn't talking points. She really cares. She really truly is concerned about what Donald Trump would do to this country. And I think if you look at somebody that was introduced onto the campaign trail three months ago to today –

I don't think there's anything you could have done any better. If you ran this scenario 100 times, 99 out of 100, she would end up in a worse position than she is today. So it's been pitch perfect and it's tied. And that's saying a lot because she came from five or six points under, you know, with Joe Biden.

Yeah, and she's managed to move more than the head-to-head number for my scorekeeping. She's managed to move up her favorabilities to being net positive, where she was way underwater. Trumps are still underwater. Trump cannot break 47%. It's like a hard ceiling. He could cure cancer, and he can't break 47%.

So that idea that he is running some sort of campaign that's parallel to hers is ridiculous. She's actually doing all the work out there. And I've been impressed by the work ethic of the candidate and the candidacy and, and the ability to go out and talk to you know, last night and the, and the convention speech, those were both speeches from the middle. The convention speech in particular was a speech from the middle. I was pretty comfortable with it. I, I,

I didn't notice any communism in that speech, as you always hear. So, but yeah, it's going to be an exciting few days. So what are you going to be up – what are you doing in the last little sprint here? Are you back out on the road? No, you know, look, it's interesting. I think the last few days, maybe I'll throw another day out there. I can go travel for the campaign. Really –

we're kind of in that point where there's not much else to do. I mean, the candidate kind of gave their closing statements. You know, if I go do another event or two, like if I think it'll make a difference, I'll go. But I think there's a point where, and I see this in every campaign where you kind of, everything that's said has been said. It's literally all about turnout in the last week.

So, yeah, I'm sure there'll be some things I'll do, but I'm not going to break my neck in the next week or whatever, because I think we're pretty much where we are. You can almost take the vote today and I think it'll be pretty similar to five, six days from now. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think we're going to look at I think it's going to be a late night election night, but I do think she's going to win it. I think I think the work they've done in Pennsylvania, especially with Republicans, has been very effective. I think it's really closed the gap in that state. If we win Pennsylvania, he has to run the board.

the rest of the night. And I don't think that's in the cards. So, well, Adam, my friend, I appreciate you coming on the podcast today. We will, we will, we'll, we'll talk to you again after all this chaos is over and, and, and, and let's, let's, let's, let's go run through the tape. You bet. Thanks, buddy. It was good being with you. And hopefully next time it's under much better circumstances. Absolutely. All right. See you soon.

The Lincoln Project Podcast is a Lincoln Project production. Executive produced by Whitney Hayes, Finn Howe, and Joseph Werner-Cheny. Produced and edited by Whitney Hayes and Jeff Taylor. And good luck. Hey, everybody, if you'd like to get in touch, if you have suggestions for a guest or a show topic or just general questions, our email is podcast at LincolnProject. That's podcast at LincolnProject.us.