Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said Friday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that former President Donald Trump’s claims he won the 2020 election could lead to domestic violence that larger than the January 6 Capitol riot.
Kinzinger said, “On January 5, we never imagined that January 6 the level of dead would happen, although a lot of us predicted violence up to that day. That’s the if you floor now. So when you look at online rhetoric and chatter that’s happening, and you look at maybe 100 people post insane comments like bring out the gallows, even if only two of those out of 100 are serious, that leads to violence.”
Kinzinger said, “Yeah, it absolutely does. In the past, when you know in the ’90s it was the U.N. black helicopters, you always have eras of conspiracies, but they were never given oxygen by people in authority. When you have someone in authority that then comes up and even if they don’t directly say — obviously, the former president constantly says the election was stolen. But maybe if he doesn’t directly, for instance, parrot what QAnon has been saying, there is little winkles or nods to it. Or there is no disavowing of it. When somebody with authority speaks conspiracy or when somebody with authority speaks that dark part in everybody’s heart that we always have to fight against, the desire to hate, the desire to divide, it gets permission to let that overtake you. We can’t be surprised when this happens to a large scale like we saw on January 6 and like we are concerned about in the future.”
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