‘That firewall is crumbling’: Ex-GOP lawmaker slams Trump ally for defending antisemite
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) took time on CNN Thursday evening to tear into Kevin Roberts, president of the far-right Heritage Foundation, for his refusal to condemn ex-Fox News personality Tucker Carlson for interviewing white nationalist Hitler sympathizer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Roberts' claim that Fuentes and Carlson shouldn't be deplatformed has sparked a firestorm of anger and divided staffers within Heritage itself, fracturing the organization responsible for crafting President Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda. It wasn't until after days of controversy that he finally backtracked.
"Congressman, what — I don't understand why it's a difficult question at all," said anchor Anderson Cooper. "Shouldn't — I think all Republicans would condemn Nick Fuentes' hateful comments, full stop."
"Yeah, you'd think. But remember, Donald Trump invited him ... to Mar-a-Lago to have lunch with him and Kanye," said Kinzinger. "This is crazy. I mean, look, this is — there's always been, you know, we'd have Lincoln Day dinners, right? This is like the big fundraisers for the GOP. And there'd always be a weird table. And the weird table would always have 1 or 2 people that were kind of like Nazi-ish, I guess. And that firewall, for the most part, in the GOP, held where it's like, yeah, they may be considered to the right, but they're not part of us."
Now, however, he said, "It feels like that firewall is crumbling and you hear sometimes people on the right say, we have no enemies to the right. And what they're saying is anybody that is on the right, even as far as Nazism — we have no enemies, we have to make common cause. The ultimate enemy is the left and the liberals. And so the fact that it has taken Kevin, that Heritage Foundation president or chairman, whatever, as long as it has to condemn that is enough to say like that firewall is crumbling now."
"I'll give Ted Cruz something here for speaking out as quickly as they did on this. Some of them," added Kinzinger. "But this — this has to be burned right out of the party. And unfortunately, it's taking too long to do that."
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‘Smells fishy’: Analyst stunned by House GOP’s reluctance to swear in new representative
A professor of international politics was stunned during an interview on Thursday because Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has still not sworn in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona after more than a month after her election.
Grijalva, a Democrat, won a special election to replace her late father last month. She has pledged to support a discharge petition to force a discussion about releasing the Epstein files, which some experts have suggested is the main reason Grijalva has not been sworn in.
Scott Lucas, who teaches international politics at the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin, discussed Grijalva's situation in a new interview for "The Trump Effect" podcast.
"They're just trying to avoid the reckoning," Lucas said. "The fact here is I don't think you're going to shift Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and that handful of Republicans."
"It just smells fishy," he added. "It smells fishy that they will not even allow a discussion on this."
Lucas added that the situation with Prince Andrew in the UK adds an interesting wrinkle in the case.
"I honestly think that Johnson and the Trump camp just think it'll go away, and the reason why I think Trump may think that is...he's gotten away with it for so long, [he] can get away with it again," Lucas said.
