Kinzinger on Trump’s first 100 days: ‘I see failure after failure’

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Tuesday slammed President Trump over the first 100 days of his second term, calling them a “failure.”

“With the 100th day of the Trump presidency here, it’s the perfect time to step back and survey the wreckage,” Kinzinger wrote on Substack. “And when I look across the landscape, I see failure after failure. One phrase from his first inaugural speech keeps coming to mind — ‘American carnage.’”

“In just his first 100 days, Trump has issued more than 130 executive orders, throwing the economy, higher education, the legal system, and much of the federal government into chaos,” he added. “He pardoned 1,600 insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. And most damaging of all, he declared a trade war with China — and pretty much the rest of the world — sending us hurtling toward a severe recession.”

More than four years ago, Kinzinger and nine other House Republicans voted to impeach Trump for his part in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. The former lawmaker from Illinois has also been a fierce critic of the president in the years since the Capitol riot and backed former Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the White House last year.

While giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention last year, Kinzinger said that the GOP “is no longer conservative.”

“It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself,” he said at the time.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, in response to The Hill’s request for comment, asked, “Who is Adam Kinzinger?”

In his Tuesday Substack post, Kinzinger referred to the president’s economic policy as “disastrous,” and he knocked Trump administration officials such as tech billionaire Elon Musk, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He also went after Trump over his response to the war in Ukraine.

“A failure at home. A failure abroad. A failure in the polls. If there’s one thing Trump has proven in his first 100 days, it’s that he’s consistently bad at this job. Too bad for the rest of us,” Kinzinger said in the post.

have delivered historic victories for the American people,” Parnell said in the Tuesday statement.

In a statement emailed Monday, an HHS spokesperson told The Hill that the agency is “eliminating waste, cutting bureaucracy, and demanding accountability.”

“The American people voted for this transformation — and at HHS, we’re delivering. We’re eliminating waste, cutting bureaucracy, and demanding accountability from a Department that was spending nearly $2 trillion a year while health outcomes declined,” the spokesperson said.

The Hill was directed by the Defense Department toward a statement from Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell.

“From day one, our overriding objectives have been clear: restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and reestablishing deterrence. In 100 Days, the Department of Defense and our warfighters have delivered historic victories for the American people,” Parnell said in the Tuesday statement.

Updated Monday at 11:34 p.m. EDT