Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger voiced his concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s campaign having ties to Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Kinzinger appeared on The Source with Kaitlan Collins Friday to respond to Kennedy’s statement on Jan. 6. His statement was a response to a fundraising email that referred to rioters as “J6 activists.” Kennedy went on to clarify that some “protesters broke the law,” but he was “concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment.”
“Look, this is — this is one of the more insane ramblings I‘ve heard from him and I‘ve heard some insane ramblings,” Kinzinger said of the statement. “His campaign has been hijacked by MAGA. Maybe not ‘hijacked,’ maybe voluntarily. And so, you’re gonna start seeing more and more of this kind of Donald Trump conspiracies, and he’s either going along with it, because that’s gonna help him raise money and get notoriety, or he truly believes it. Regardless, he’s absolutely wrong, and this is a frightening thing.”
While Kennedy is running as an independent candidate against Trump this November, Kennedy defended the former president’s involvement in the riots from over three years ago. He claimed to make an effort to “to hear every side” and cited conversations with “reasonable people, including Trump opponents.”
“They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully,’” Kennedy wrote.
This comes after a March 23 fundraiser hosted by a couple named Steve and Tracy Slepcevic on Kennedy’s behalf. Tracy was a ReAwaken America tour speaker alongside Trump’s advisor Roger Stone and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell among others. Steve was in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 but did not enter the Capitol building during the riots and was so far removed from those that did that he claimed online afterward that it was a “staged event.”
“This is [Kennedy’s] way of pleasing those that want to hear that he just hasn‘t looked at the evidence in detail and winking to the MAGA folks,” Kinzinger said.
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Kennedy initially filed to run as a Democratic candidate for president but switched to being independent weeks into his campaign. He has garnered 13% support nationwide, according to a poll cited by Collins, but Kinzinger said he was “not sure that 13% number holds up in the long-term.”
Since becoming an independent, Kennedy has collected enough signatures to be on the ballots in Utah, Nevada, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. However, the Nevada signatures now might become invalid because at the time the signatures were collected, Kennedy had not named his running mate Nicole Shanahan. Nevada requires independent candidates to list the entire ticket in order for the signatures gathered under that ticket to qualify.