Adam Kinzinger Tries Owning Trump Over Speaker Vote, Ends up Owning Himself Instead

As we previously reported, it was another wild day on Capitol Hill Thursday for Republicans as the high drama over former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) numerous failed attempts at winning the powerful House Speaker position seemingly reached fever pitch.

At one point, things got really interesting on the House floor when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) formally nominated close ally and former President Donald Trump for House Speaker, declaring that it was time at long last to “make the House of Representatives great again!”

By the time it was all said and done, however, McCarthy once again didn’t get the votes he needed while Trump got just one.

The latter was apparently a source of great amusement for failed, now-former “GOP” Congressman-turned-CNN political commentator Adam Kinzinger, who took to the Twitter machine to take a jab at his political nemesis–because of course he did:

Trump got one vote for speaker. ONE VOTE.

— Adam Kinzinger #fella (@AdamKinzinger) January 6, 2023

While such obnoxiousness is to be expected from Kinzinger, especially considering his new gig, what it left out of course is the fact that Kinzinger was having to watch Trump get that one vote from the sidelines because he decided to bail from Congress rather than run again, after his newfound friends in the Democratic party in Illinois essentially gerrymandered him out of a job.

Further, it was yet another shining example of Kinzinger’s oft-displayed lack of self-awareness. Because this entire brouhaha including Thursday’s “one vote for Trump” has been further proof that, contra to Kinzinger’s claims otherwise, Trump doesn’t have (or perhaps “no longer has”) the stranglehold on the party that opportunistic anti-Trumpers like Kinzinger have routinely claimed he has.

If that is indeed the case, life on the CNN/cocktail circuit for Kinzinger is going to get very boring in a very short period of time, because the whole reason he is lauded and celebrated in media/left-wing circles is because of his stances against Trump. If Trump isn’t as influential on the party as he has been in the past, and if he loses in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, Kinzinger won’t have much to talk about – except himself.

And even though he loves to do things like that, that’s not why he was hired at CNN and that’s not why he gets invited to talk on political panels, and it’s not why most of his fans tune in to his Twitter feed and his cable news interviews.

In short, in attempting to own Trump, Kinzinger ended up owning himself instead. Because if that “one vote for Trump” is indeed symbolic of what I and others have said about Trump’s possible waning influence on the Republican party; it could very well mean that Kinzinger’s glory days on left-wing news outlets and panels – much like his time as a Never Trumper in Congress – could end up drawing to an embarrassing close much sooner than he would like.

Bless his heart.