Kinzinger Questions ‘Broken’ GOP — Matt Gaetz Has to Be ‘Embarrassed’

During a Thursday interview with CNN’s “New Day,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) called into question his GOP colleagues after votes to remove Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Liz Cheney (R-WY) from their committee assignments.

Kinzinger, who supported Cheney amid a failed effort to oust her from her position chair of the House Republican Conference for voting to impeach former President Donald Trump, said his colleagues like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) should be “embarrassed.” He then asked if the GOP is so “broken” that it cannot even come together to remove Cheney after standing up for Greene.

“I think that having the vote was important because people like Matt Gaetz and some in the freedom club had this idea that they, you know, had the votes to overtake her, and she crushed it,” Kinzinger told host John Berman. “And I’ll tell you she never apologized for her vote. She defended herself, but on the Marjorie Taylor Greene stuff … I won’t go into a lot of details, but she did address the issue, and I didn’t hear an apology personally. Maybe she did say it, but the bottom line is I think until she publicly disavows all her comments from the past and says, you know, everything going forward, you know, I don’t take it too seriously.”

“Liz committed no sin except to vote her conscience,” he continued. “You know, who’s the one that put everybody in our party in an awkward position on impeachment? It wasn’t Liz Cheney. It wasn’t me. It was Donald Trump. And, boy, last night, I’ll tell you what. The people that claim they had the votes to remove her are embarrassed today — your Matt Gaetzes and stuff like that. But, you know, again, to have stood up and even defended Marjorie Taylor Greene, I thought for sure she’d lose her committees. And I’m kind of still bewildered about why there was no change whatsoever. I mean, are we really that broken as a party that we can’t even take a stand on something like that? I don’t know.”

Kinzinger then urged House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to do a better job leading the GOP and move on from Trump.

“Look, Kevin needs to stand for truth in this party,” he declared.

“He needs to stand for truth, and he needs to recognize that this party, the future is not going down to Mar-a-Lago and being with Donald Trump,” Kinzinger emphasized. “Look, I mean, he’s going to be our leader. I’ll support him as a leader. But I think, you know, if they’re going to go after Liz Cheney, I think … Kevin McCarthy has to really think about leadership and how to lead this caucus going forward, especially because she got defended last night by 145 of us.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent