Kinzinger Slams GOP Colleagues For Citing Nazi-Era Images To Criticize Covid Vaccination Efforts

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By Daniella Diaz and Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN

Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger criticized his GOP colleagues, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, for relying on Nazi-era images to mock President Joe Biden’s latest vaccination efforts against Covid-19.

“This is absolute madness,” the Illinois congressman said of his House Republican colleagues’ comments in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union”.

He went on to say: “This is a policy of outrage that is being played by my party and it is going to get Americans killed.”

“Our Party has been hijacked, my Party has been hijacked. He’s on his way to the ground. And for some people, it’s a fun ride, right? We can post this outrageous stuff on Twitter, ‘Yeah, I get all these retweets and everyone knows me, I’m famous,’ ”he said. “But this plane is going to crash into the ground.”

Kinzinger called on Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders to encourage Americans to get vaccinated and “call these trash politicians, these outright clown politicians playing on your vaccine fears for their own selfish gain.”

He also urged Republican voters to get vaccinated, saying Covid-19 “is real” and the vaccine is safe.

The White House continues to make vaccination the main focus of its strategy to fight Covid-19, and announced this week that it will move to more targeted community outreach, as the Delta variant and groups of Americans under -vaccinated threatens the nation.

Biden said on Tuesday: “Now we have to go community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and often, door to door – literally knocking on doors – to get help for the remaining people protected from the virus.”

The White House also recently announced that it would deploy response teams – comprised of officials from the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency – across the United States in areas with high spread of the Delta variant and low vaccination rates to help scale up testing, provide supplies and as support staff for vaccinations.

In response, Greene, a Republican from Georgia, on Tuesday compared US officials to the Nazi-era “brown shirts”, a paramilitary group that helped facilitate Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s and 1940s. Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, tweeted, “Biden has deployed his Needle Nazis in Mesa County. “

On Sunday, Kinzinger argued that Biden could have phrased his words “a little differently” but said that “at no point did anyone say they were going to kick your door down and put a vaccine in your arm despite your protest “.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Paul LeBlanc, Kate Sullivan and Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.

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