Adam Kinzinger declares the end of the Republican Party

Former Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, declared the end of the Republican Party on Friday following this year’s Republican National Convention (RNC).

The RNC began earlier this week in Milwaukee, where former President Donald Trump officially accepted the Republican nomination for the 2024 election in a speech lasting over 90 minutes. The four-day event featured a variety of speakers, including Trump family members, Republican officials and candidates, as well as entertainers, celebrities and industry leaders.

Following the convention, Kinzinger, a vocal Trump critic who represented the state of Illinois until 2023, criticized the convention on X (formerly Twitter) and announced the end of the Republicans.

“The convention said it clearly: Republicans are dead. Now that we know, it’s time to apply pressure,” the former congressman wrote, sharing a link to his Substack page where he continued to write about the convention.

In his Substack post titled “The Convention Has Spoken and Told Us: The Republicans Are Dead,” Kinzinger used several examples to explain how the RNC demonstrated that Trump has succeeded in turning the Republicans into a “personality cult.”

“It was called the Republican National Convention, but in reality it had nothing to do with the Republican Party that most of us once knew. Gone were the serious political debates and party platforms. In their place came a celebration of Donald Trump, who has succeeded in turning one of the country’s two major parties into a personality cult,” the former congressman wrote.

On his Substack, Kinzinger pointed out that Trump’s nomination of Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate and the appointment of former White House adviser Peter Navarro to speak at the convention only exacerbated the “death of the old GOP.”

“The death of the old GOP was signaled earlier in the week when Trump chose the chameleon JD Vance as his running mate. By choosing Vance, Trump showed that he is not concerned with pleasing old-style Republicans who would have been appeased if he had picked a Marco Rubio or a Tim Scott as his running mate,” Kinzinger wrote.

Vance was announced earlier this week as Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential election. In the days following his announcement, Vance’s positions on key political and cultural issues attracted national attention and intense scrutiny from Democrats. Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2022, Vance has positioned himself as a staunch conservative senator and close Trump ally.

However, Vance was a vocal critic of Trump years before he began his political career. He frequently condemned the former president during his first term and voted for independent candidate Evan McMullin in the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, Kinzinger added: “In further evidence that the convention was dominated by extremists, Trump’s former White House adviser, Peter Navarro, rushed to the podium just hours after his release from federal prison. He enraged the crowd with a tirade of falsehoods… Since it is now the Trump party, the crowd in Milwaukee absorbed Navarro’s message of fear, which is ultimately the gateway to anger.”

Navarro, who spent four months in prison for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, took the stage at Congress on the day of his release from prison and spoke about the need for control, because otherwise people like “Steve Bannon and I would be in prison” and “controlling the rest of us.”

Bannon began his prison sentence in Connecticut on July 1 for also refusing to cooperate in the January 6 investigation.

Meanwhile, Kinzinger warned that the fight against Trump is not lost and urged traditional Republicans and independents to “gather their courage and energy” to fight him.

“I will not hide the fact that I mourn the loss of the old GOP and fear the cult of Trump. But I am equally concerned about Democrats who are shrinking from the fight and concluding that Trump’s election is inevitable. I would say that given that there is still a remnant of traditional Republicans left, and that independents must be deterred by a Trump who wants to be emperor, it is time to gather our courage and energy. The fight against him is not lost,” he wrote.

Newsweek has emailed the Republican National Committee for comment.

This came after Kinzinger made his support for President Joe Biden official in a post to X in June.

“As a proud conservative, I have always put democracy and our Constitution above all else. And because of my unwavering support for democracy, today, as a proud conservative, I am supporting Joe Biden for re-election,” he said in a video.

However, the former congressman’s support for Biden sparked mixed reactions on social media.

“Adam Kinzinger is a former Republican congressman who investigated on January 6th. He knows Trump is terrible and a threat to the country. Today he endorsed Joe Biden,” posted the X-account @PatriotTakes.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia responded to the support, writing on X: “Oh look, Kinzinger finally came out. As always, we knew it all along, so it was no surprise and none of us care.”