Adam Kinzinger: second Trump term could be ‘devastating for world order’

A second Donald Trump presidency could spell the end of democracy in America and prove “devastating for the world order”, Adam Kinzinger, a Republican former congressman, has warned in an interview with the Guardian.

Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, is vowing retribution against his political enemies in a second-term agenda more radical than his first, including mass deportations and a purge of the justice department. Kinzinger, one of the most prominent Trump critics in America, is sounding the alarm.

“The best-case scenario is a completely inept, ineffective government,” he said by phone. “The worst-case scenario is look, in his four-year term, he did not understand what he was doing. He was just trying to survive and he actually listened to people around him until the end. Now he’s going to put people around him that share his views, that will only reaffirm his views and, frankly, some of these people are pretty smart and they know how to work around the constitution or around the law to bring these authoritarian measures in.”

He added: “Is it going to be the end of the United States of America? I don’t think so but I’m going to stress: think. But it certainly will set us way back in the progress that we’ve made.”

An air force veteran first elected to Congress in 2010, Kinzinger broke from his party after the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. He denounced the then president for inciting “an angry mob” with false claims of voter fraud and was among 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him.

He was later one of two Republicans, along with Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who joined the House of Representatives committee to investigate the January 6 attack. He also formed a political