Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign has been “hijacked by MAGA” Friday.
Kennedy referred to rioters in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as “activists” and suggested they were victims of an “outrageous miscarriage of justice,” in a Thursday statement.
“His campaign has been hijacked by MAGA,” Kinzinger told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a Friday interview.
“Maybe not ‘hijacked,’ maybe voluntarily. And so, you’re gonna start seeing more and more of this kind of Donald Trump conspiracies, and he’s either going along with it, because that’s gonna help him raise money and get notoriety, or he truly believes it. Regardless, he’s absolutely wrong, and this is a frightening thing,” Kinzinger added.
Kennedy’s email drew comparisons between charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Jan. 6 defendants, stating, “Rarely do opposites attract, especially in Washington.”
“Yet regarding the case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who is facing extradition to the US, both hard-right [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Green [R-Ga.] and hard-left [Rep.] Ilhan Omar [D-Minn.] Agree: We Must Free Assange Now!” the email continued.
“The Brits want to make sure our government doesn’t kill Assange. This is the reality that every American Citizen faces – from Ed Snowden, to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties,” it said.
A spokesperson for Kennedy’s campaign, Stephanie Spear, later said in a statement obtained by The Hill that the email’s language was an error.
“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views,” Spear’s statement said, first reported by NBC News. “It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”
Kinzinger also responded Friday to comments Kennedy recently made on CNN, in which he claimed President Biden was a larger threat to democracy than former President Trump.
“You can dislike Joe Biden, like, but you can’t with a straight face — this isn’t even… I mean, it’s not even subjective, this is like fact,” Kinzinger said.
“You can’t with a straight face say that Joe Biden’s a bigger danger to democracy. Joe Biden has gone along with democracy as he’s president, he’s gone along with the rules of democracy. He’s not trying to overthrow any election results,” Kinzinger continued.