Republican congressman urges GOP to say ‘this is not a Trump-first party’

Republican Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger urged Republicans Sunday to say it “is not a Trump first party.”

Chuck Todd of “Meet The Press” asked Kinzinger about a picture of former President Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy meeting at Mar-a-Lago.

“The former president is desperate to continue to look like he’s leading the party, and the problem is until we push back and say, you know, this is not a Trump-first party, this is a country-first party,” Kinzinger told Todd.

“Until we all kind of stand up and say that, we’re going to be kind of chasing our tail here in this situation,” Kinzinger told Todd.

McCarthy and Trump met on Thursday at Mar-a-Lago to discuss strategies for winning the House majority. The two spoke about the midterm 2022 elections.

Trump and McCarthy’s meeting was their first to occur in-person following the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, according to Politico Playbook.

Kinzinger was among 10 Republicans who voted in favor of impeaching the former president. The House voted 232-197 on Jan. 13 to impeach, charging him with a single article of “incitement of insurrection.”

Kinzinger said he’s started the CountryFirst PAC, hoping it will trigger a movement, according to The Washington Post.

“That’s why I launched countryfirst.com. It’s a landing place for people to go to and we’ll see how it develops, but there’s a lot of folks out there, Chuck, that have texted me, called me written everything to say thank you for saying something because nobody else has been,” Kinzinger told Todd.