PowerPost

GOP Rep. Kinzinger wages a lonely fight against Trump’s falsehoods and right-wing disinformation

By Mike DeBonis
Dec. 5, 2020 at 11:07 a.m. EST

Rep. Adam Kinzinger arrived in Washington a decade ago as a star of the tea party revolution, a young Air Force pilot who campaigned as an outsider ready to shake up the Republican Party. Now he is an outsider once more — one of only a handful of GOP lawmakers willing to openly criticize President Trump and his grip on the party, even in the final weeks of his presidency.

Since Election Day, Kinzinger (Ill.) has been nearly alone among House Republicans in not only recognizing Democrat Joe Biden as president-elect and rejecting Trump’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud but in using his Twitter account to push back on the most domineering GOP leader in generations.

When Trump on Wednesday posted a 46-minute video rife with falsehoods and conspiracy theories to Facebook, Kinzinger delivered the ultimate rebuke to the social media-obsessed president: “Time to delete your account.”

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Mike DeBonis
Mike DeBonis covers Congress, with a focus on the House, for The Washington Post. He previously covered D.C. politics and government from 2007 to 2015. Follow https://twitter.com/mikedebonis