Transcript:

Maria  

Hi Adam!

Adam Kinzinger 

Thanks for having me.

Maria  

Thank you for writing the book, thank you for your service to our country, thank you for being out there and publicizing the book. We had you in The Sunday Paper yesterday. I love this cover. I love the term Renegade, because it describes you. And I love the subtitle, Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country.

Adam, let me begin with this moment in our divided country. Everybody's trying to make sense of this moment and I thought who better to make sense of it, than you. How do you make sense of what's going on our country?

Adam Kinzinger 

Well let me do my best. There’s a lot of, obviously, anger and I think if you go back a number of years—but let's take the financial crisis in ‘07 and ’08—anytime you have a massive financial crisis, you get a spate of populism. Well, that started rising, and then in the Republican Party, a guy named Donald Trump came along. I think Donald Trump wasn't necessarily the cause, but he was an accelerant and he started saying things that no other leader would have ever thought that it would be okay to say. I can go through the litany of stuff, but everybody knows it. And I think that just gave permission to people to be mean and to see the other side as the enemy and not just political competition. 

So for me, that's kind of a quick and dirty of where we are at the moment. Sometimes when you get angry and mad that turns the other side into the bad guys, the other side turns you into the bad guys. Instead of doing the hard work of governing ourselves, which is hard work, we've just turned to demonizing each other. Unfortunately, right now we have a very sick party, the Republican Party, and this country needs two healthy parties. We don’t have that right now.

Maria  

How do we get there? How do we make sense of this moment and find hope to move forward out of this moment?

Adam Kinzinger 

I think there's always hope, because very rarely has history never repeated itself, right? It always does. If you look at times in this country—yes, we have this information revolution, but we've had information revolutions before. Yes, you have this rise of antisemitism and white supremacy, we've had that before in this country. Yes, you have a rise of open extremes, we've had that. We always come back, but that's not automatic. 

The thing I tell the people is, first, I think the Republican Party has got to lose. It's got to lose elections to basically wake up from this moment it's in. Beyond that, all of us have to take authority over what we believe and what kind of news we see. If you want to go get your news from just the right or just the left, or whatever your flavor is, you can do that—that doesn't mean you're getting the truth and I think we have to educate this next generation. I'm a big proponent of things like civics education again. We have to push this next generation to say, “You've got to find out the truth for yourself and you've got to listen to multiple sources and not just demonize the other side.”

Maria  

As I just said here, Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country—defending democracy is really critical to this moment. What is the cost of defending democracy? What price do you think you have paid for trying to do that? And how do those who are not in an elected position do that?

Adam Kinzinger 

I paid a price. My family paid a price. I talk about this in the book, for the last, I don't know, 10 months since I've been out of Congress, I've come to grips with the impact it's had on us. You don't get PTSD when you're actually fighting the war, you get PTSD after the war is over. I kind of feel like that now, but I don't say that to try to get anybody’s sympathy. I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was signing up for when I ran. And I knew I had a red line. That red line was crossed and I knew I couldn't live with that. So there's been a cost to me, but it's one that I'm really proud to have bared. My kid, Christian who I dedicated the book to with my wife, will be able to read his last name in the papers or in the history books and be proud of his last name. I've got a lot of former colleagues whose kids won't be proud of their last name. 

What's the cost everybody else? You've got to drop some of that anger, that's a gain, I think. I think it's learning to love somebody that thinks differently than you and understanding that people, and even the most hardcore MAGA and the most hardcore left-winger, they both want the same thing, which is a healed country. They just see how to get there differently. Our only sacrifice is to just sometimes put away our anger and be able to tolerate or talk to other people and live by example. That's the key. 

What's the old saying? “People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care,” [Theodore Roosevelt]. Understanding that you're in it for the right reason. The other sacrifice is just blocking the misinformation. 

Maria  

How do you think you can make an impact today, Adam, being out of Congress, compared to previously in Congress?

Adam Kinzinger 

In Congress—so I'm very passionate about Ukraine, for instance, and aid to Ukraine. I don't have as much of an impact now as I could’ve in Congress because I could have denied votes to Speaker Mike Johnson, for instance, until he promised to put Ukraine aid on the floor. But I also now have a broader audience I can talk to. First off, this book, and again, I want to say thank you for entrusting me with that. I know it was a big deal for your imprint. Thank you for that and it's going to sell well, I know. So I have a broader audience I can talk to. I work for CNN now so I'm on TV a lot. With the book tour, I've been on some other areas, and I'm doing a lot of speaking, and it's reaching an audience that I otherwise couldn't have reached. If you come in like, “Hey, I'm a congressman. Listen to me,” people have a preconceived notion. With what I've had to deal with now, I can reach a whole different audience. 

Maria  

So you chose to stay in the Republican Party, right? “Ish.”? But why stay at all? We have a lot of talk about an Independent Party or other identities. Do you think the two-party system can still work in this country? Or do we need a viable third party?

Adam Kinzinger 

I would love a viable third party. I would love a Centrist Party. There’s a couple of big problems with it. First off, the whole structure is set up to favor a two-party system. To get on the ballot as an Independent in Illinois, for instance, you need like 15,000 petition signatures, and only 600 to get on as a Republican. So there's structural issues, but I would love to see that happen. 

That said, I think that has to start not in a presidential election, but it has to start in congressional elections because in a presidential election, if you have a three-way tie, the only person who is going to become president is the one with the most seats in the House of Representatives or what the most state caucuses, because that's how it is. So yeah, I would love to see that happen. I think the two-party system isn't per se broken, I think you have a broken party right now in the GOP. 

Why am I not leaving the party? Not yet, and it's because first of all, I don't want them to win. I refuse to give up. The second I say I'm no longer a Republican too, I lose a lot of audience and a lot of ability to criticize the party. I still have hope that it could come back because it has to, but I'll tell you, I voted Democratic last election and unless something changes I intend to vote Democratic this coming election.

Maria  

Adam, we heard a lot about the price you paid for serving on the January 6th Commission. For saying things like you just said, “I'm a Republican-“ish,” but I voted Democratic. People would be like, “Whoa.” We heard that parts of your family wanted to disown you and that that was really painful. So many millions of Americans are in the same boat as that, they're divided from their own families. We're looking at Thanksgiving, how do people go home? How do people have these conversations? How have you been able—or have you been able—to work with your own family so to speak? When you think about cost you paid, was it worth it?

Adam Kinzinger 

First off, was the cost worth it? 100% yes and twice on Sunday because in my mind, when you go into politics—everybody that's gone into politics has dreamed about a moment where they could stand up and do something big, even if they stood alone. I had that chance. Very few people get that chance and I had it. And those that have it, very few actually do it. 

I see things in a very historical context and I know that, my son will be proud to be a Kinzinger and that means a lot to me. In terms of these other relationships, and how am I dealt with this, and I think this is a good lesson for everybody. When you go to Thanksgiving dinner, for instance, first off, don't talk about politics. Okay? It's okay. You don't have to tell you about politics at Thanksgiving. 

Maria  

But you can talk about this book and you could bring this book to your Thanksgiving dinner because it talks about living in a divided country, but go ahead.

Adam Kinzinger 

You can talk about Renegade—Yes! Just love the people you love, because once you do go through a disownment like I went through—my dad's cousins disowning me—that is a very difficult thing to repair. In fact, to be honest with you, I haven't even made an effort because in my mind, if somebody is willing to break with me as family, or my copilot from Iraq, and I don't think I put this in the book, because this one was pretty painful. My copilot from Iraq sent me a text and said he was ashamed to have ever flown with me. Because why? Because he disagrees with the politics and what does he disagree with? He disagrees with me telling him the truth. That kind of stuff is painful. I'll say, there's no reason to fix those relationships in that case, because all you're doing is submitting. If somebody is willing to disown you, they're probably not a good friend. But if you have a broken relationship, like your sister, or your father, or whatever that is, and there was no disownment, and you still love each other—the best thing you can do is just try to restore that relationship again. If you let Donald Trump or whoever break that family apart, then he has won, he has done exactly what he wanted to do.

Maria  

I was listening to a poll this morning watching the news, and Donald Trump has kind of solidified his lead in the Republican Party. We saw former Vice President Pence drop out over the weekend, and the former president just kind of widened his lead when it comes to Republican voters. What does that tell you about this country? What does that tell you about the party? And to me, it makes no sense. So I'm wondering, who does it make sense to?

Adam Kinzinger 

The best way to put it and I saw dozens of comments splashed about, they're in a cult. It is. It's a cult. And, a cult is basically defined, as you insulate yourself from the outside world, many times you follow a personality, you don't have a consistent viewpoint, right? That's what the GOP has become. And a lot of these people like Mike Johnson, for instance, the new Speaker, is smart enough to know he's lying to the American people, but he doesn't want to exit that cult. Because Maria, one of the things I think people fear more than they fear death, is being kicked out of a tribe and losing their identity. So I think what's sad is, there's been such—I mean, look at somebody like me, I'm a moderate Republican, but fairly conservative, being completely excommunicated from a party, not because I had some view they didn't like, but because I won't bow to the “Orange God King.” That to me shows that it's a cult. I think that's the problem. Donald Trump has got to lose in 2024. And I've got to tell you, all my Democratic friends watching, don't take that for granted. I think the election is going to be much closer. And what I tell any of my Republican friends that think like I do or anybody who's an Independent: there is one issue, only one issue on the ballot in 2024. Do you believe in democracy, or do you support authoritarianism? And I think all the other issues, you may disagree with Joe Biden on every issue he's done, but you know what he doesn't, he's not an authoritarian and he likes democracy. That's the only issue on the ballot as far as I'm concerned.

Maria  

So you think people should vote singularly on that?

Adam Kinzinger 

I do. I do. You can go see if there’s a Republican member of the House that's been speaking out. I can't think of any, but maybe there's some out there. You know, do your research and all that kind of stuff, but I think there is just one issue on the ballot, because if Donald Trump wins—Imagine the interstate and you have the guardrails when you go over the bridge. Those can take an impact. Boom, you hit, keeps your car on the road, you don't fall off into a bridge. It can take one impact. If another car hits that same guardrail before it's been fixed, it'll tear the guardrail off and we'll go off a cliff. Those guardrails were tested and they barely held on January 6^th. They have a game plan now and the only way to keep them out of that is to keep them out of power. 

Maria  

Adam, where do you find your hope today in this moment? I think this book is full of hope. You strike me as someone who is full of hope, is patriotic, who believes in service. But so many people are disillusioned about the government, disillusioned about our inability to bring around sensible gun reform, they're disillusioned about what's going on in the rest of the world. Where do you find your hope at this moment? 

Adam Kinzinger 

That’s a great, great, great question because I find my hope partially in my faith. I believe in God and I believe that he's in control and I have that trust. I find my hope in—we've already done a few of these book signing events and going out, and literally having people come up to me in tears thanking me for what I've done. It gives me tears when it happens. That shows me that in the core of America, there’s still that. If people were kind of passive or agnostic about what was going on—that's when I would lose my hope. If people quit tweeting tweets all over Twitter and putting political Instagram posts up, that's when I would lose my hope. The fact that people are angry about where we're at, and the fact that I get those folks that come up and want to take a picture with me not because I'm a famous celebrity, but because they appreciate what I was able to do shows that that core still exists. That's where I find my hope. Maybe we fail. I'm not naive to think that this country couldn't fall apart, but we haven't yet and I refuse to leave Christian Kinzinger a country worse off than I inherited it because we'd be the first generation to do that.

Maria  

I love that. I agree. I find my hope in everyday people, people who want to defend democracy, but people who show up in hospitals who are nurses who are doctors, who are essential workers who kind of are under the radar under the headline, under the news, the glare of the news, and they are just working, as I always say moving humanity forward. Adam, talk a little about that.

Adam Kinzinger 

The fact that 18 people are killed, and the fact that bothers us and makes us angry, also fills me with hope, because most of us don't know those 18 people. We could just write that off, but we care. We care about the atrocities that were done to the Israelis, we care about the lives of Gazans, even if we support Israel's right to self-defense. That gives me hope.

Maria  

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, I think more people have their hearts on the line, which is why they want to defend this country, even with the challenges that it has had in the past and the challenges it has in the present, people still believe in it. And you have an organization that talks about putting your country first talk a little bit about that. Why people might want to get involved in that and what its ultimate goal is.

Adam Kinzinger 

It’s Country First, country1st.com, this actually started, I basically did this video after January 6th, where I'm like just calling out the Republican Party and Trump and I kind of intended this initially to just be a “let's fix the GOP” and I came to realize that the fights bigger. We need to support people in both parties that put the country over the party, that's the most important thing. It's not just congressmen and women, it's also local elected officials. So that's what we're investing in. As you know, I love foreign policy. And I love America's role in the world. And one thing we do really well is building democracies overseas, like institutions, we don't do a good job of doing that at home, because we never thought we had to. And so I see country first as a democracy building institution. And I'm really excited because we started something called Country First Academy, because you probably get this where, where you have people like, “Hey, I want to go into journalism. What do I do?” I get all the time with politics, “I want to go into politics.” We've started an academy for people to basically learn how to get into politics, only requirement is put your country over your party.

Maria  

Wow. But you can come you can say I'm in the Republican Party, I'm Democrat, but I commit to putting my country first and then you help them learn how to run or learn how to mount a campaign? Or do you school them on what a democracy is, and how to defend it, or what the cost of that is?

Adam Kinzinger 

It’s all of it. The most important step I get is the mechanics. I get a lot of good people that just don't know, “How do I get on a ballot? How do I run? How do I raise money?” That kind of stuff. If we can take away and help people through those barriers, and say, here's how you do it, here's some ways to raise money. And here's a way to get your message out, we can start. 

One of the things I love is we're actually more focused on local candidates, right? Whether that's an elected official, a county official, or a city council, man or woman, that to me is the best because that's where you're building the farm team. It's going to take us a decade to get out of where we're at right now. But you don't get out of that with some election to Congress, it's got to happen by that next generation. That's kind of raised up in the system, so to speak, now running for Congress, for instance, and saying, you know, if you crossed my red line, or if I have to violate my oath in any way, I won't do it. And you know, one of the things that's really important to me, and this is gonna sound controversial at first, and it shouldn't be, I never sworn an oath to the 700,000 people I represented, ever. I never sworn an oath to them. I swore an oath only to the Constitution, which means I need to represent the 700,000 people I represented well, but when it came down to it my commitment—every one of those people, which they didn't believe this, but every one of those 700,000 could have believed that the election was stolen, and I should have voted against certification of the election, but my oath to the Constitution prevented me from doing that, because that's the only thing I swore an oath to. More people need to see that.

Maria  

I love that, Adam Kinzinger. We’ll put up about that organization. But I want to remind everybody here that the book is called Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country. You can go on Amazon or your local, independent bookstores.

Adam Kinzinger

And I read the audio book too so you get to hear me if you get that.

Maria
He read the audio book, and he's going around the country promoting it. He has a tour. And I love that you said people are coming up to you at the tour because people do want to thank you. I reached out to Adam to write this book because I was so impressed with his courage, with his stand, regardless of his party. Several people said to me, why are you publishing a book by a Republican? I said, because I'm publishing a book by a patriot. I'm publishing book by someone who stood up for their country. I always try to see beyond the labels. I think we all deserve that and we all should give that to another person. Whatever the label would be, whether it's your political affiliation, your religious affiliation, we should be thinking about who is that human being? And what do they stand for? What are their values. 

I'm really proud to publish this. I love the New York Times on the back “A consistent, if lonely, Republican voice speaking out against the big lie that the presidential election was stolen.” One of the first and so many have joined him, but they wouldn't stand up when he needed—to stand up along with Representative Liz Cheney. I'm really proud of you. I know you probably did this for your son, but I think you also did for so many people in the country who you felt perhaps didn't understand really what was at stake, how difficult it was, and how we can be involved moving forward. We're going into a pivotal election year and you said you think it’s going to be closer than the last time, that’s terrifying.

Adam Kinzinger 

It terrifies me too. I’ll say this, it’s the weight of the world that rests on everybody's shoulders today. Release it, right, all you can do is your best. All you can do is try to influence the people around you. But just take that weight off, because the thing I worry about is sometimes people put that whole weight of where we are as a country and all that stress and then they eventually get to the point where they just quit paying attention and quit caring. We don't need anybody to quit caring and paying attention. We need you to continue to stay down because I'm gonna tell you the forces of authoritarianism, their secret is they don't quit and we can't quit either. Thank you.

Maria  

Amen. Beautifully said and thank you so much, Adam. Good luck. I'm gonna be pushing it out. Have fun with it. Don't forget to have fun and enjoy the moment. It's a lot to write a book. It's a lot to birth the book. It's scary. I don't care who you are. So Let's rally around him and support this book. Tell everybody you know all about it, it’s beautiful. Thank you, Adam, too.

Adam

Thank you, thanks for believing in me. Bye everybody.