Adam Kinzinger group gives 2022 help to Republicans who impeached Trump

Kinzinger, 43, has emerged as among Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics since the Jan. 6 ransacking of the United States Capitol by the 45th president’s grassroots supporters. The congressman, already facing a primary challenge from a pro-Trump Republican, wants to boost traditional conservatives and repel the populist takeover of the GOP led by the former president and his loyalists. Trump is popular with Republican voters, but Kinzinger believes he is ruining the party.

“We can’t survive like this,” Kinzinger told reporters, immediately following Trump’s speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, his first since leaving the White House. The address was similar to speeches the former president delivered on the campaign trail in 2016 and 2020. Kinzinger said Trump’s performance reminded him “why we’re working to restore the heart of the Republican Party.”

After refusing to support Trump in 2016, Kinzinger voted for him last November despite lingering skepticism.

But after the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, the congressman renounced the 45th president. He relaunched his dormant political action committee, Country First, and is using the group as the basis for a long-shot campaign to push Trump out of the GOP. Americans Keeping Country First, formed by Kinzinger’s political allies, plans to unveil an affiliated political nonprofit organization as part of its overall mission to complement the congressman’s effort.

Trump, during his speech at CPAC, name-checked the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him Jan. 13 on the one article of impeachment alleging that he incited the riot at the U.S. Capitol the day that Congress was voting to certify President Biden’s Electoral College victory. Trump also named the seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict him, making clear he wants all 17 of them out of the party and out of office.

“Get rid of them all,” Trump said. Through his Save America PAC, the former president is vowing to make endorsements and support preferred Republicans financially in the 2022 midterm elections. At least one political group overseen by a Trump confidant is already doing so.

Fight Back Now America is run by Corey Lewandowski. He was Trump’s first campaign manager during his 2016 presidential bid and still a part of the former president’s inner circle. In tweets and fundraising appeals, Lewandowski and Fight Back America have already targeted Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 ranking House Republican. “We — The People — already know that Pres. Trump is the leader of the Republican Party,” Lewandowski tweeted Sunday. “Unfortunately, The Establishment & RINOs in our Party need a reminder.”

Lewandowski recently tweeted his support for Catalina Lauf, the Republican challenging Kinzinger in the GOP primary in Illinois’s 16th Congressional District. In a tweet announcing her candidacy, Lauf labeled Kinzinger a “fake Republican” and said he “won’t put America First.”

Katherine Doyle contributed to this report.