- Rep. Adam Kinzinger said Trump's mind is a "scary place to be" on the Bulwark podcast.
- Kinzinger likened Trump to "a child who is angry" at Vice President Mike Pence on January 6.
- "This wasn't some poor man who was betrayed or misled by Mike Pence," Kinzinger said.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger said President Donald Trump's mind is "a pretty scary place to be" and likened him to 'a child' angry at Vice President Mike Pence on January 6 in an interview with The Bulwark's podcast.
Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, and Rep. Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat, are set to lead Thursday's primetime hearing of the January 6 Committee, focusing on Trump's actions and communications during the 187 minutes that his supporters breached the Capitol before Trump released a video telling them to go home.
"Imagine yourself sitting in the Oval Office, watching the Capitol be attacked," Kinzinger told The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes. "It's like, what would you do? You would be like crawling out of your skin to go on TV or tweet, let's say even, just tweet, 'get the F out of the Capitol,' right. What did the president tweet? 'Stay peaceful. Remain peaceful'."
"We're going to learn a lot of that stuff and get into his mind, which is a scary place to be, because I think it's important for people to understand that this wasn't some poor man who was betrayed or misled by Mike Pence, this was someone who knew exactly what he was doing," Kinzinger added.
Kinzinger said the hearing will leave "absolutely no doubt" that Trump knew that the protest at the Capitol had turned into a riot and Pence was in danger by 2:24 p.m., when Trump tweeted that Pence "didn't have the courage" to try and overturn the election.
Kinzinger said that tweet "directly fueled" rioters who were following Trump's "marching orders" as they sieged the Capitol.
"People can forget, if you were a MAGA-head, how often you were refreshing your Twitter app to see when Donald Trump is tweeting, and that's what they were doing the whole time during this attack," Kinzinger said. "You can see in this a child who is angry that Pence didn't do it, and he's like, 'let's see where this goes,'" Kinzinger said.
Kinzinger sarcastically joked that Trump "actually showed some pretty heroic strength in resisting the pressure campaign to get him to call off the attack," adding that he's gotten an "emotional feel" for Trump's mindset on January 6 that he's planning to highlight in the hearing.
Trump and his aides have repeatedly criticized the panel's investigation as being partisan, but those views are not presented in the hearings due to the House minority leader's decision to pull more Republicans from the committee.