Kinzinger warned McCarthy that his decision to back the stolen-election fiction would only increase the potential for violence on January 6. “Look, you’re convincing people the election was stolen,” Kinzinger recalled telling McCarthy. “You know damn well it wasn’t.” To Kinzinger, the Republican leader’s calculation was obvious: McCarthy knew the election wasn’t stolen, but he felt that incumbent Republicans would be destroyed by primary challengers if they admitted Trump lost the election legitimately. QAnon and its conspiracy theory thinking had infiltrated the party. Republicans were
...more
