If Andrew Cuomo gets an Emmy, Adam Kinzinger deserves an Oscar. Whether motivated by a pin prick in his pocket or mere imaginary circumstance, the Illinois congressman gave a waterworks performance that might have put Shamu to shame during Tuesday’s opening hearing of the “January 6th Commission,” on which Kinzinger and his colleague Liz Cheney make up the only Republicans.
“Like most Americans,” the congressman bawled, “I’m frustrated that six months after a deadly insurrection breached the United States Capitol for several hours on live television, we still don’t know exactly what happened.” Kinzinger seems to know less than most people. If he knew that prosecutors have not charged a single Capitol trespasser with seditious conspiracy, he could not continue to call the event an “insurrection.” If he knew that only Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter in the Capitol, died a violent death there that day, he would have to redirect his “deadly” slur from the mob to the cops whom he spent the afternoon praising.
If he followed public opinion polls and Senate votes, he would know that Americans care much more about infrastructure, the federal budget deficit, health care reform, and immigration than they do about investigating the young man in the horn hat for dancing around the Capitol rotunda.
Kinzinger shed no tears for the dozens of people killed in the months-long Black Lives Matter riots that torched cities coast to coast last summer, nor did he demand any congressional commissions to investigate who instigated the violence. Kinzinger would not have had to look far since his Democratic colleagues constituted some of the terrorists’ most prominent cheerleaders. Then-senator Kamala Harris helped to bail the belligerents out of jail. Instead, Kinzinger mocked the notion that the leftist political violence merited any congressional investigation at all.
“I condemn those riots and the destruction of property that resulted,” the congressman conceded. “But not once, did I ever feel that the future of self-governance was threatened like I did on January 6th. There is a difference between breaking the law and rejecting the rule of law.” According to Kinzinger, BLM may have broken the law when it burned down police stations and federal courthouses, but the theft of Nancy Pelosi’s lectern by a smiling Florida man threatened the rule of law itself.
Even the manliest man loses his composure on occasion. But Kinzinger’s womanish clown act surprised no one — least of all the congressman, who doubtless had rehearsed the scene as would any ham actor about to get the hook. When Kinzinger plays to his liberal audience by attacking fellow Republicans, he assumes the role to which he is best suited in our national drama: that of the court jester “conservative,” who never threatens the powers that be but rather merely struts and frets for the pleasure of the ruling class—truly a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.