Illinois GOP Congressman Calls Trump Tweet ‘Beyond Repugnant’

By WBEZ Staff
Kinzinger
In this March 6, 2019 file photo, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., speaks to the media at the White House in Washington. Kinzinger is slamming as “beyond repugnant” President Donald Trump’s tweet of a conservative pastor’s comment that removing Trump from office would provoke a “civil war.” Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press
Kinzinger
In this March 6, 2019 file photo, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., speaks to the media at the White House in Washington. Kinzinger is slamming as “beyond repugnant” President Donald Trump’s tweet of a conservative pastor’s comment that removing Trump from office would provoke a “civil war.” Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press

Illinois GOP Congressman Calls Trump Tweet ‘Beyond Repugnant’

By WBEZ Staff
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Republican Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger has slammed President Donald Trump for quoting a conservative pastor’s comment that any move to oust Trump from office would amount to “treason” and spark a civil war.

Trump on Sunday tweeted a comment from the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of the Southern Baptist megachurch First Baptist Dallas.

“If the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office, it will cause a civil war-like fracture in this nation from which our country will never heal,” Jeffress said on Sunday on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend, which Trump posted a few hours later.

Kinzinger, a former Air Force pilot who represents Illinois’ 16th District that Trump won in 2016, tweeted on Sunday, “I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. … I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant.”

The president on Monday continued to react against the whistleblower whose complaint launched a U.S. House’s impeachment investigation and the congressman leading it, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.

“Arrest for Treason?” Trump tweeted of Schiff on Monday in one of many presidential suggestions that his opponents should be investigated.

Kinzinger, whose district includes DeKalb and Rockford, has crossed Trump before.

He joined Illinois’ Republican congressional delegation in calling on Trump not to commute former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s prison sentence, a move the president has considered.

House Democrats are pushing for quick action on their probe into a transcript and whistleblower complaint that Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden’s family. If the House approves articles of impeachment, they would go to the Senate for trial.

The Associated Press contributed.