Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that if former President Donald Trump truly believed he won the 2020 presidential election, he was not mentally capable of being president.
Partial transcript as follows:
JOHN DICKERSON: Let me ask you about one of the findings on Thursday evening, one of the things we were shown for the first time is several people close to the president telling him there was no widespread fraud, he was going to lose, that’s what the numbers showed. How many people do you think in his- close to him were sending him that message?
KINZINGER: Well, I look, we’re gonna get more into that. But let me just say this, I don’t really know many people around him that truly believed the election was stolen and told him so–
DICKERSON: Do you–
KINZINGER: — he had a lot of people, he had a lot of people that told him it wasn’t.
DICKERSON: Were there people who knew it was a lie and yet carried on in his inner circle?
KINZINGER: Oh, for sure. I mean, look, all you have to do is look at- he was surrounded by yes, people that want to come and tell him everything that pleases him. You know, and we’ll get more into that. I don’t want to really kind of spoil the deep dive into some of this stuff. But look, I think if anybody truly believed after, you know, the- after what you see, after what the attorney general says, for instance, after what every piece of information comes in, if you truly believe the election was stolen then, if the president truly believed that, for instance, he’s not mentally capable to be president. I think he didn’t believe it. I think the people around him didn’t believe it. This was all about keeping power against the will of the American people.
DICKERSON: But just to put a fine point on exactly what you’re accusing the president of, during COVID, President Trump at the time said it’s- it’s like the flu but later we heard Bob Woodward had audio of the President saying no, it’s nothing like the flu. So he was saying something out loud. He hit was on record, in private, saying the absolute opposite of. Do you have evidence of that? About this?
KINZINGER: Well- I won’t go into- again, I don’t want to go into the evidence that we haven’t put out yet. Let me tell you my belief that I can say right now, the president absolutely tried to overthrow the will of the people and he tried to do it initially through misinformation, through the Department of Justice, through pressuring the Vice President, and then on January 6. And he was told repeatedly by people that he trusted, that he respected people like, you know, folks around him, that the election wasn’t stolen, that there is no corroborating proof of any kind of a stealing or any kind of a corruption that would- that would change the outcome. And so I think it’s pretty obvious he knew, but he didn’t want to lose.
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