Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger predicted that late Republican President Ronald Reagan would be backing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election.
Kinzinger, among Trump’s most outspoken GOP critics and a member of the House January 6 committee while serving in Congress, endorsed Harris during the Democratic National Convention last month despite remaining a Republican.
On Tuesday, hours before Trump and Harris were set to face off in their first and possibly only presidential debate, Kinzinger speculated that Republican icon Reagan would have taken a similar stance by supporting Harris over Trump.
“Reagan would be on Harris 2024 all damn day,” Kinzinger wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter.
Reagan would be on Harris 2024 all damn day.
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) September 10, 2024
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump and Harris campaigns via email on Tuesday night.
SAUL LOEB/AFP; Bettmann / Contributor
Melissa Giller, chief marketing officer for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, said in an email to Newsweek that her organization would “never speak on behalf of President Reagan when it comes to elections as only he would know what he would do.”
While Reagan’s opinions on a presidential election taking place more than two decades after his death are anyone’s guess, Kinzinger, who left Congress last year, has often and repeatedly made his stance on Trump clear following the January 6 attack.
In an X post on the Capitol riot’s four-year anniversary, Kinzinger argued that Trump was running for a second term this year because he is “a small, frightened man who sees the justice he deserves” for the attack “and countless other crimes catching up to him.”
Kinzinger’s criticism of Trump has not been limited to January 6, with the former Republican congressman also having a history of personally insulting the ex-president over his allegedly foul “odor.”
During an interview with liberal news outlet Meidas Touch late last year, Kinzinger said that he was “amazed” that it was not common knowledge that Trump smells of “armpits, ketchup, a butt and makeup” put into a blender in preparation for bottling “as a cologne.”
In a previous statement to Newsweek, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that Kinzinger “farted on live TV and is an unemployed fraud,” while adding that the former congressman “disrespects everyone around him because he is a sad individual” after he “disgraced his country.”
Kinzinger is not the only prominent Republican to publicly back Harris over Trump. Last week, former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Kinzinger’s January 6 committee colleague, endorsed Harris alongside Cheney’s father, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.
Former Trump administration officials like Stephanie Grisham, Anthony Scaramucci and Olivia Troye have also endorsed Harris, as has Republican former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan.
However, nearly all of the Republican politicians who are backing Harris are no longer in office, with Mayor John Giles of Mesa, Arizona, being among the few to do so publicly.