Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger minced no words during a Friday morning appearance on CNN’s “New Day” when he addressed the tweets coming from the head of his party.
“I expect him to act like a president,” Kinzinger told anchor Chris Cuomo, when asked about President Donald Trump’s Thursday morning missives about MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
He added, “I saw the tweet yesterday and actually, I had to hear it a couple of times and I thought this was from way back in the campaign.”
“That’s a tweet that’s not even becoming of a city councilman. We have to expect a lot of our president. Look, he is unorthodox and I think that can work to his advantage in certain ways,” he continued.
While the Illinois congressman argued that the American people elected Trump out of a desire for “straight talk,” he condemned Trump for punching downward, singling out individuals, and trying “to go after folks’ character.”
Kinzinger went as far as to call Trump’s social media post about the hosts “nonsensical,” saying he hoped someone in the White House was watching and could change the tone.
Cuomo cited the White House’s defense of Trump’s right to attack anyone who attacks him, including Brzezinski. But Kinzinger replied, “She’s in the news business; she’s got an opinion. This is a pretty rough-and-tumble game we’re in. I take hits from media sometimes and it doesn’t always make you happy but it doesn’t mean I lash out. I volunteered for this job. I ran for this job. I asked people to put me in this job.”
He went on to talk about health care reform, which Trump tweeted about Friday morning. In that tweet, the President called on elected officials to “just repeal” the Affordable Care Act if they couldn’t find a way to replace it right away.
“I think it’s repeal and replace,” responded Kinzinger. “I think we have to have a good system for the American people to come in. We can argue about whether they like the system that we’re bringing in or not but I think to simply put a repeal — even with a sunset of a year of two down the road — the problem is, we know how Washington works. Sometimes on deadlines, we still don’t get things done. You can’t leave the American people out like this.”
Kinzinger was not the only elected official, Republican or Democrat, to disavow Trump’s message about Scarborough and Brzezinski. Numerous lawmakers called on him to stop tweeting after he called Brzezinski “crazy” and made critical comments about her appearance.