“One thing to understand about Adam Kinzinger is that he knows how this will end. ‘The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead,’ the Republican congressman from Illinois says. He is quoting a scene from the World War II series ‘Band of Brothers’ in which an officer dresses down a lieutenant who hid from battle. The officer continues: ‘And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function.’ Kinzinger, who is also a pilot with the Air Force National Guard, took those words as an order. His embrace of this fatalistic credo made it easier for him to fly planes into enemy territory during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. It made it easier for him to object late last year as President Donald Trump and some of his congressional colleagues amplified the myth of a ‘rigged’ election, stoking violent revenge fantasies among the party’s politically valuable give-me-MAGA-or-give-me-death contingent.”
“And it made it easier for Kinzinger, a young, square-jawed Republican with his whole political life ahead of him, to vote to impeach Trump in the aftermath of the failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. ‘I’m willing to blow this whole thing out of the water at all times,’ Kinzinger said of his career in politics. The 42-year-old congressman, who last fall won reelection easily, spoke to The Washington Post from his office a week after the attack on the Capitol. He was the only Republican to vote in favor of a resolution urging Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and strip Trump of his presidential powers and one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for inciting a riot at the Capitol” – Washington Post.