Kinzinger: American Civil War ‘Real Possibility’ — ‘Our Basic Survival Is at Stake’

Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said Monday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party continuing to claim the 2020 presidential election was not valid and downplaying of the January 6 Capitol riot it was increasing the “real possibility” of a civil war in America.

Kinzinger said, “We’re in a real dire moment. I think if we don’t wake up and recognize that it is more than just performance art when we lie, when we tell people elections were stolen, this actually goes to the survival of this country and in the form, we know it. it is that serious.”

Anchor Wolf Blitzer said, “How dangerous is it for the Republican National Committee to whitewash the events of that day and simply call it ‘legitimate political discourse?'”

Kinzinger said, “Oh, it is extremely dangerous, and it is not even — it’s if there was a word even more intense than dangerous, I would use that.”

He added, “It is not a far thought, Wolf, to think that someday, some militia shows up somewhere to do something and then some counter-militia, and at that point that is how you end up in a civil war. I never would say that we would ever have ended in that position, but I now believe it is a real possibility that we have to be wide-eyed as we walk into so we don’t have that happen again.”

Blitzer said, “Am I hearing you, right Congressman? You fear, potentially, there could be a civil war here in the United States?”

Kinzinger said, “I do. And a year ago, I would have said no, not a chance. But I’ve come to realize when we don’t see each other as fellow Americans, when we begin to separate into cultural identities, when we begin to basically give up everything that we believe so we could be part of a group, and then when you have leaders that come and abuse that faithfulness of that group to violent ends, as we saw on January 6, we would be naïve to think it is not possible here.”

He added, “We have to look at this wide-eyed and walk in and say, we may have differences as left and right, but we have to bridge those differences, because our basic survival is at stake, the basic survival of this democracy.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN