Kinzinger on GOP-majority House: They’re going to demand a Biden impeachment vote every week

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) in a new interview predicts that GOP lawmakers will demand a vote to impeach President Biden “every week” if Republicans take control of the House in the midterms.

Kinzinger, a frequent critic of former President Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill, compared previous efforts by congressional Republicans to what he predicts “crazies” will attempt to do under a GOP majority.

“Back before we had all the crazies here — just some crazies — you know, every vote we took, we had to somehow defund ObamaCare. … You’ll remember, right when we took over it was we need to do the omnibus bill, but we’re not going to vote for it because it doesn’t defund ObamaCare,” Kinzinger said on CNN’s “The Axe Files with David Axelrod,” released Monday.

“That’s going to look like child’s play in terms of what [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene [R-Ga.] is going to demand of [House GOP Leader] Kevin McCarthy [Calif.]. They’re going to demand an impeachment vote on President Biden every week,” he added.

Republicans are widely expected to take control of the House in November, though Democrats are battling to limit the size of a potential GOP majority. According to FiveThirtyEight, Republicans are favored to win control of the lower chamber over Democrats, 71 percent to 29 percent.

If they do secure the majority, a number of Republican lawmakers are preparing plans to impeach Biden over various matters. Some conservative House members have already introduced impeachment articles against the president over his administration’s efforts on border enforcement, the COVID-19 pandemic and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year, to name a few. 

Kinzinger said a GOP House majority may also try to “make abortion illegal in all circumstances on this omnibus bill.”

The Illinois Republican, who is not running for reelection in November, predicted that McCarthy — the current House minority leader who is expected to become Speaker if Republicans win the lower chamber — will have a difficult time governing because of “crazies” in the GOP conference.

“I think it’ll be a very difficult majority for him to govern unless he just chooses to go absolutely crazy with them. In which case you may see the rise of the silent, non-existent moderate Republican that may still exist out there, but I don’t know,” he said.

Kinzinger predicted that McCarthy is “not going to be able to do much” and also raised the possibility that the GOP leader would not receive the Speaker’s gavel at all, suggesting Trump and members of the conservative Freedom Caucus could push for a more right-leaning leader.

McCarthy was close to the Speakership in 2015 but ultimately dropped out of contention after making a controversial comment about the taxpayer-funded Benghazi Committee.

“I think it’s quite possible,” Kinzinger told Axelrod when asked if McCarthy will not be Speaker come January.

“I think if there’s, particularly if there’s a narrow Republican majority, let’s say there’s five, a five-seat Republican majority, it only takes five Republicans or six Republicans to come together, deny Kevin the Speakership because they weren’t, let’s say, [Rep.] Jim Jordan [R-Ohio], where they have this idea that Donald Trump can sit as Speaker. Any of them can do that. And I know these Freedom Caucus members fairly well, and I know that they have no problem turning their back on [McCarthy] and they will,” he added.

He said he would “absolutely love to see” McCarthy not become Speaker in January.