GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Illinois) slammed Donald Trump’s weekend rally in Wellington, Ohio, dismissing it as a “loser president” still whining about an election he lost.
“It was a rally of a loser president. I mean, he’s the first president to lose reelection in decades,” Kinzinger told CNN on Sunday. “I don’t know why these people would go there and in essence ogle at and in many cases just sort of worship a loser.”
At his first rally since leaving office Trump recycled his same talking points about President Biden being a puppet of the far-left and repeated his grievances about losing the 2020 election which he falsely blamed on widespread voter fraud.
Kinzinger also noted that Trump did not speak much about Max Miller–the candidate for whom the event was held–who is challenging Rep. Anthony Gonzalez for his seat. Gonzalez was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump mentioned Miller, briefly but spent most of the evening falsely claiming that the election was rigged. In recent weeks Trump has been reportedly pushing allies in right wing media to tell their audience he will be reinstated in August.
Kinzinger called it “frightening” that so many people would believe that Trump will be president in August, and called on Republicans to tell the truth.
“If nobody is taking the role of leader and leading people a certain way, telling them the truth when the Republic is at risk ― which it truly is right now ― then you can’t expect anything but what you saw last night, which is thousands of people that believe the election was stolen because they don’t hear people telling them otherwise,” Kinzinger said. “It’s high time that other members of Congress ― any leader, any county official, any Republican official ― say the simple thing that Joe Biden was elected president. And work against his reelection, but quit pretending like it was stolen because that’s really, really dangerous.”
Another Republican who has been critical of Donald Trump, Sen Mitt Romney (R-Utah) likened the rally to a WWE wrestling match, saying it was “entertaining, but not real.”
“It’s entertaining, but it’s not real,” Romney said. “And I know people want to say, yeah, they believe in the ‘Big Lie’ in some cases, but I think people recognize that it’s a lot of show, and bombast. But it’s going nowhere.”
