Adam Kinzinger had yet to endorse Trump but was hoping to be persuaded after the convention – but now says Trump crossed a line ‘of the unforgivable’

A Republican congressman who is a veteran of the Iraq war has said he cannot support Donald Trump in the wake of the presidential nominee’s ongoing feud with the parents of an American soldier.

“I don’t see how I get to Donald Trump any more,” Adam Kinzinger said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday. “Donald Trump for me is beginning to cross a lot of red lines of the unforgivable in politics.”

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Kinzinger had yet to endorse Trump but said he had been hoping to be persuaded following the Republican convention in Cleveland, where the reality TV star formally accepted the party’s nomination for president.



Kinzinger said he was instead dismayed to find Trump berating Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son Captain Humayun Khan died in Iraq. The soldier’s father spoke out against Trump at the Democratic convention and in subsequent interviews.

Kinzinger, whose district Trump carried in the Illinois Republican primary in March, said he would not support Clinton nor tell voters how to cast their ballots. But he simply could not back a nominee who “throws all these Republican principles on their head”.

“I’m an American before I’m a Republican,” Kinzinger said. “I won’t be silent. He can tweet all he wants. I have to do this for my country and for my party.”

Kinzinger also cited Trump’s professed fondness of Vladimir Putin as disconcerting, saying it was hypocritical for the Republican party to have spent months attacking Hillary Clinton for pursuing a so-called “reset” with Russia as secretary of state, but to then ignore their own nominee’s overtures toward the Kremlin.

“Now you have Vladimir Putin basically pulling out the old KGB playbook on how to manipulate Donald Trump and it appears he’s fallen right into it,” Kinzinger said.



Trump has been heavily criticized for a recent interview in which he insisted Putin would not invade Ukraine, two years after the Russian president seized the country’s Crimean peninsula. Trump also signaled he would support the Russian annexation of Crimea, which has not been formally recognized by the United States.

The defection is the second high-profile stand against Trump in just two days. Richard Hanna, a Republican congressman from New York who is retiring after this term, announced on Tuesday he would vote for Clinton in November.



Kinzinger’s home state senator Mark Kirk, who is facing one of the toughest re-election battles this cycle, rescinded his endorsement of Trump in June when the real estate mogul questioned the partiality of an American judge over his Hispanic heritage in a lawsuit against his eponymous university.



Republicans are now fearful that a growing number within the party may come out against Trump, who made matters worse on Tuesday by refusing to support the re-election bids of the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and John McCain and Kelly Ayotte, two of the more vulnerable Republican incumbent senators.



A Fox News poll out Wednesday found that 58% of voters now believe Trump is not qualified to be president. The same survey also found Clinton with a 10-point national lead over Trump, with 49% support to his 39%.

On Wednesday, Seth Klarman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and sometime Republican donor, said he would work to get Hillary Clinton elected, condemning Trump’s “shockingly unacceptable” remarks and calling the candidate “completely unqualified for the highest office in the land”.

“… It is simply unthinkable that Donald Trump could become our president,” Klarman said.

The president and chief executive of the Baupost Group told Reuters that Trump’s suggestion “that the election will be rigged is particularly dangerous”.

Klarman, whose heads a Boston-based $29bn investment firm, has given to both Democrats and Republicans over the years. This election cycle he gave to political action committees that supported primary candidates Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio.

He has also given to the campaigns of Democrats, including now-US senators Cory Booker and Mark Warner, according to the filings. He contributed $4,600 to Hillary Clinton’s 2007 presidential race, while also giving to the campaigns of Republicans John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.

In June Klarman gave $5,400 to Clinton’s campaign.

With Reuters