Kinzinger Calls Trump Supporters ‘Quite Creepy’ Over Their Reaction to Mar-a-Lago Raid: ‘The Party’s in a Bad Place’

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said the reaction Donald Trump supporters have had to last week’s FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate is “quite creepy” and that his Republican Party is “in a bad place.”

Last Monday, the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida residence to look for official government documents Trump was supposed to turn over to the National Archives upon leaving office. Many conservatives responded with unmitigated fury over the former president’s home being raided.

Trump has further stoked tensions by characterizing the search in extreme terms. Last week, a gunman attacked an FBI field office in Cincinnati before being killed by law enforcement.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Kinzinger if Trump is responsible for “inciting his supporters.”

“Yeah, absolutely, 100%,” the congressman said. “I posted a thread somebody put up of a number of folks on TikTok that were putting out, you know, not just anti-government, but really threats to violence, pictures of their guns saying it is time, we’re coming. I mean, this is ridiculous. I mean, and it’s ridiculous obviously for what the former president has done in terms of saying, ‘This is an attack on my home.'”

Blitzer pointed to reporting saying that Trump has reached out to Attorney General Merrick Garland to explore ways to deescalate the fervor.

“Does it strike you as odd that the man that set the fire apparently tried to ask the attorney general to put it out?” the anchor asked.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s a creepy message to be honest with you, just like, frankly Donald Trump and his supporters have become quite creepy in how they’re acting and what they’re threatening,” Kinzinger replied. “I don’t know what it means. Only Donald Trump in his own head knows what that means. But it does strike me as something like, you know, what you hear from the mafia. ‘Hey, if you want your store to be secure, give us money. We’ll make sure you’re secure,’ when in fact there was never a threat in the first place.'”

Later in the interview, Blitzer asked Kinzinger about Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), with whom he serves on the Jan. 6 committee. She is widely expected to lose to a Trump-backed primary challenger on Tuesday.

“What would it say about your party if she were to lose her seat?” Blitzer asked.

“Well, I think it shows that the party’s in a bad place,” he responded. “Look, we are standing up against evil. Liz Cheney is standing up against evil. And say this, I put out this message the other day, which is, a lot of people sit around and they dream about the day they get to do it and very few people get that chance to really stand up against evil. And as we’ve seen in Congress, many that do get that chance don’t. She has fought a valiant fight.”

Kinzinger is retiring from Congress at the end of his term in January.

Watch above via CNN.