Kinzinger Visits Georgia to Praise Biden, Bury Trump

ATLANTA — Four years ago, Georgia election officials stood at the bottom of a marble staircase in the state’s historic Capitol building to assure the American people that the 2020 presidential election had not been rigged to prevent former President Donald Trump’s reelection.

On Wednesday, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., stood in exactly the same spot, not just to praise President Joe Biden, whom he’d formally endorsed earlier in the day, but to urge his former Republican colleagues to bury Trump and his MAGA era for the sake of America, Democracy and the party’s own future.

“If you’d told me three years ago that ‘you’re going to be endorsing a Democrat for president in three years,’ I probably wouldn’t have believed you,” Kinzinger said as he stood beside former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, ex-Capitol Police Office Harry Dunn, and Georgia’s current state Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler.

“But I’ve got to tell you, the stakes of this moment are way too high,” he said. 

“As you all know, I officially endorsed President Biden today and it’s very simple why,” the former congressman continued. 

“If I look at who’s going to fight for people, and who’s going to fight for himself, I think there is nobody that believes Donald Trump is more committed to this country and doing things for others than Joe Biden is,” he said.

“Joe Biden has made it clear that even when we disagree — and there are things that I disagree with the president about — that he’s going to put the interests of the country and the interests of the people ahead of his own interests,” he added.

Kinzinger, once considered a rising star in his party, told reporters he didn’t abandon Republicanism; his former colleagues, he said, moved away from him and their own moral compass.

“I didn’t change; they changed,” he said.

Though he conceded he might have to forgo the title “Republican” if Trump were to win another term, Kinzinger said he doesn’t fear the former president.

“He’s small. He whines and complains like no one else I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, this guy was once the most powerful man in the world, and yet all he does is whine,” he said.

Kinzinger went on to say he plans to channel that absence of fear into an all out push to persuade disaffected old school  Republicans — what he called “the Nikki Haley Republicans” — to vote for Biden despite their philosophical differences with Democrats in general.

“We know that there is still a group of Republicans that are very uneasy about Donald Trump,” he said. 

“What I’m saying is, this one time, vote to defend Democracy. I’m not expecting them to become Democrats anymore than I’d expect Joe Biden to become a Republican because he has our support.

“But this election matters. There’s more at stake than partisan politics,” he added.

Duncan sounded a lot like the kind of voter Kinzinger is trying to reach.

While he added supporting a Democrat for president “is going against the grain” and “not easy,” he said he simply can’t look at the 2024 election “through the lens” of a die-hard Republican.

“I’m looking through the lens of being an American,” he said.

“I’m looking at it as an American that cares more about the future of my country than the morally bankrupt nominee of my party,” he continued. “There are political ramifications to this decision, but they pale in comparison to four more years of Donald Trump. … Enough is enough.”

The press conference’s most moving remarks, however, were delivered by Dunn, a victim of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 2021.

“I’m here because I want to stop the election of a dictator,” he said. “That’s not my phrase, it’s not MSNBC’s or CNN’s words, that’s what Donald Trump himself said he would be ‘from day one.’

“Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our democracy and to the safety of our communities that this country has ever faced,” Dunn said. “You all here in Georgia were at the epicenter of his dangerous and extreme attempt to overturn the results of a fair and free election. He even tried to get your secretary of state to illegally find votes for him after he lost the state.

“Trump has encouraged and continues to encourage political violence,” the former officer continued. “You know what you saw on Jan 6. And now you have people who support him by saying, ‘That didn’t happen.’ ‘The rioters were on a tour.’ What we went through that day, didn’t exist.

“But let me tell you, the officers that were on duty that day gave everything they had that day, as did the men and women of the Metropolitan Police Department. And let me say this as well: Donald Trump is solely responsible for what happened that day.

“We can’t afford to go along with those who excuse Trump’s violent, hate-filled rhetoric as just ‘locker room talk.’ He has told us over and over again who he is and what he believes in,” Dunn said.

“We will only have ourselves to blame if we allow him back in the White House again. He doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt,” he continued. “That’s why I’m so proud to be here with Congressman Kinzinger, who saw the effect of Donald Trump’s encouragement of political violence first hand.

“The congressman knows how important this election is. There’s nothing more crucial than defeating Donald Trump,” Dunn said. “This election is a choice, a choice between Joe Biden and preserving our democracy, our Constitution and our freedoms, and Donald Trump, who is a threat to all of them.

“I totally believe the institutions we’ve talked about today are worth protecting and fighting for,” he said. “But it’s going to take all of us, and it’s going to take our taking a stand at the ballot box in November. That’s how we will win.”

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue