Rep. Adam Kinzinger tells his fellow Republicans convicting Trump is 'necessary to save America'

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) was one of the few House Republicans to vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection, and in a new op-ed for The Washington Post, he explains to his fellow Republicans why it is so important to hold Trump accountable for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Holding an impeachment trial is not "political theater" or a "waste of time," Kinzinger wrote. "If the GOP doesn't take a stand, the chaos of the past few months, and the past few years, could quickly return. The future of our party and our country depends on confronting what happened — so it doesn't happen again."

Impeaching Trump shows that "enough is enough," Kinzinger said, and he warned that "the situation could get much, much worse — with more violence and more division that cannot be overcome. The further down this road we go, the closer we come to the end of America as we know it."

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Kinzinger called out Republicans who "encouraged" Trump's "dangerous lie" that the presidential election was stolen, and said the GOP of his youth "would never take that road." Trump "changed that dynamic," he argued, making the Republican Party one that runs on "outrage and the fear of a darker future." Kinzinger said he thinks more Republican voters "reject" this shift, but many have gone silent because "they assume the party's leaders no longer represent them."

Since voting to impeach, Kinzinger said he has heard from "tens of thousands of my constituents," and their reaction has been "overwhelmingly supportive." He said he "firmly" believes that the majority of Americans "reject the madness of the past four years," but the country won't be able to move forward "by ignoring what happened or refusing to hold accountable those responsible." That's a recipe for "chaos in the years ahead," he said, which is why convicting Trump is "necessary to save America from going further down a sad, dangerous road." Read the entire op-ed at The Washington Post.