Adam Kinzinger: It's Starting to Happen
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Who is Adam Kinzinger and what is his perspective on current politics?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Congratulations to our friends in Canada for their overtime hockey victory against the U.S. in the Four Nations face-off last night. And I'm pumped to be here today with a great American patriot, one of our faves, formerly a Republican congressman from Illinois. He served in the Air Force. He's the founder of Country First. He writes a Substack newsletter, and I guess he does Substack videos now. Substack multi-platform content producer. It's Adam Kinzinger. How you doing, bro?
Good, buddy. You know, and it's weird because I've never rooted against America. But last night, I mean, I'll be honest, there was part of me that's like, it'd be nice to see Trump have to eat his words a little bit.
Yeah, the guy in the MAGA hat right behind the bench that kept showing was impacting my rooting interest. I'm not going to say who I was rooting for, Canada. But, you know, it definitely was nice for the Canadians. The guy...
And no offense to our friends up north, but I don't give a rat's backside about hockey. So it's not like, if this was American football and we were against Canada, but you know.
Yeah, no, me neither. They didn't change the Canadian national anthem to take a dig at Trump about how this is their country, which I liked. So anyway, I like the digs. I like the digs. It's good. All right. We've got much, much to discuss. Too much, probably. But you did a sub stack yesterday, an emergency sub stack. I want to start there. The message of it was basically, Let's get loud.
What is Adam Kinzinger's call for a new political movement?
Let's start to do something. This is a moment for a Democratic Tea Party of sorts. We can quibble over the particulars. But as somebody who was in the Tea Party wave of Congress people, what do you call it for?
Yeah, look, I mean, and this is I got to give you credit because you were talking about this yesterday and just like, you know, hey, we've got to do something. And then you were talking about how the tea party came about. And that got me thinking. And it's like, you know, it's exactly what is happening now. And here's the key that I want to say on the outset, though, is I don't want this to be, hey, this is a left wing movement. You know, the Tea Party came in and they were trying to pull the country right. This is actually a pro-democracy version of the Tea Party. So you're going to have people from all over the political spectrum here. But basically what happened in the Tea Party, Republicans felt defeated. And I remember I went, you know, exploring, running for Congress, talking to the Republican congressman like in January after Obama won. And they were just beat down. They were just sad, tired, like, yeah, I guess you can run. I don't know what it's going to look like.
And it was this grassroots energy then that started showing up at town hall meetings. And then they show I think it started with Chuck Grassley and it had to do with the health care bill. They started basically, you know, yelling, protesting, whatever. Then members of Congress quit doing town halls. And that obviously looked like they were hiding, which they were. and you just had this gasoline on a fire that ended up really overtaking the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2010. I think that's what needs to happen now. Everybody is kind of waiting, including me, I mean, we're all in the same boat, for like some action plan. Here's the one, two, three step that's gonna guarantee that we can stop X, Y, and Z. That's not gonna happen.
Like that doesn't happen. What is going to happen is there's going to be grassroots energy that rises up that begins to build whatever this movement is that it looks like. But that's how, when you have historical things that change a country, it never comes from one person giving somebody a blueprint. It always comes from like just this outrage or this anger and this demand for change. And I think we started to see that yesterday at this Georgia town hall. And, uh, I, I, I don't know. I just feel like we're at a moment where this is going to and can grow into something. And again, I do want to stress, don't make this a left-wing thing because it'll flame out. Trust me, they always do. Make this about pro-democracy and defending our government.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Who is Adam Kinzinger and what is his perspective on current politics?
0:08–1:30
2
What is Adam Kinzinger's call for a new political movement?
1:30–3:53
3
How are grassroots movements impacting political town halls?
3:53–7:48
4
Why is Elon Musk criticized for his influence on government actions?
7:48–13:57
5
What role do veterans and public service employees play in political discourse?
13:57–24:37
6
Why is now a good time for non-traditional Democrats to run for office?
24:37–30:46
7
What are the concerns regarding Kash Patel's appointment as FBI director?
30:46–49:27
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The Bulwark Daily
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