Michael: Most people think political courage is about winning a tough fight. But what if real courage looks a lot like being called a traitor by your own family, your own party, and your own voters... and being okay with it? Kevin: Whoa. That’s a heavy way to start. It flips the whole script. Courage isn't about being popular; it's about being willing to be profoundly unpopular for a principle. That’s a much harder thing to do. Michael: It's the central, gut-wrenching question at the heart of Renegade: Defending Democracy from Its Own Worst Enemy by Adam Kinzinger. Kevin: And Kinzinger is a fascinating figure to tell this story. We're talking about a former Republican Congressman, an Air Force pilot who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He wasn't some coastal elite; he was a conservative from rural Illinois. Michael: Exactly. And he became one of only two Republicans on the House committee investigating January 6th, a decision that made this book an instant New York Times bestseller but also effectively ended his political career within the GOP. It’s a decision that got him praise from critics but also led to some polarizing reviews from readers who were expecting something different. Kevin: So this isn't just a political memoir. It's a story about a man watching his own side, his own team, go off the rails and deciding he has to be the one to sound the alarm, no matter the cost. Michael: Precisely. And to understand his breaking point, you have to understand where he started. Kinzinger describes his first political race in the 90s as almost quaint.

Kevin: Quaint? Politics? Those two words don't seem to belong in the same sentence anymore. Was it ever really that nice? Michael: Well, listen to this. His first run was for the McLean County Board in Illinois. He’s a 20-year-old college kid. The local paper’s headline after his debate with the incumbent was "CORDIALITY MARKS DEBATE." Can you imagine seeing that headline today? Kevin: Absolutely not. Today it would be "CANDIDATE SLAMS OPPONENT'S FAMILY IN DEBATE." So he starts in this world of local, neighborly politics. But that's not the world that truly forges him, is it? Michael: Not at all. The real turning point is 9/11. He describes it as a profound "call to action" for his generation. He felt they'd been spoon-fed an easy life and now it was their turn to serve. So he joins the Air Force. And this is where his worldview gets pressure-tested in a way local politics never could. Kevin: You mean beyond just flying planes. Michael: Way beyond. He talks about his SERE training—that’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school. It’s designed to simulate being a prisoner of war. It is brutal. They put you in stress positions, confine you, and use psychological manipulation to break you. Kevin: That sounds terrifying. What’s the point of that? Michael: The point is to teach you that everyone has a breaking point. The goal isn't to be a superhero who never talks. It's to learn how to manage an interrogation, how to delay, how to give up information that has minimal value, and how to survive. He describes being forced to bend over, grab his ankles, and say, "I hope you’re having a great day, sir," just for the humiliation. Kevin: Wow. How does an experience like that not change your entire view of human nature and conflict? You’re learning about the mechanics of breaking a person. Michael: It gives you a very clear, very stark understanding of right and wrong, of good and evil, and of the importance of a code. And he carries that code with him. There's a stunning story where he's in Milwaukee and sees a woman running out of a bar, bleeding from her neck, with a man chasing her with a knife. Kevin: Oh man. Michael: And Kinzinger, without hesitation, runs at the attacker, disarms him, and pins him to the ground. He says his military training just kicked in. He saw a threat and acted. There was no gray area. There was no political calculation. It was just: do the right thing, right now. Kevin: Okay, I see the thread now. He's a man forged by these experiences that have very clear lines—an oath, a code of conduct, a direct threat you have to neutralize. But Washington D.C. isn't like that at all, is it? The lines are blurry, the threats are hidden, and the "right thing" is always up for debate. Michael: And that is the exact collision course he's on when he gets elected to Congress. He thinks he's joining a team to serve the country, but he quickly finds out the rules of the game are very, very different.

Kevin: Right. So you have this guy forged by duty and survival training. He gets to Congress, and what does he find? Not a battlefield of ideas, but what he calls 'Crazytown.' Michael: That's his term for it. He arrives with the Tea Party wave in 2010, and he’s initially optimistic. But he quickly sees a shift. It’s less about policy and more about performance. He tells this incredible story about Michele Bachmann, a Tea Party star at the time. He's an Air Force pilot, and she comes up to him on the House floor and asks, with total sincerity, "Do you know the Navy has airplanes? You know, like on aircraft carriers?" Kevin: Come on. She was a member of Congress. That’s just… stunning ignorance. It’s like she was playing a character of a politician on TV. Michael: That’s exactly his point. It became about fame, about soundbites, about outrage. He describes the Tea Party as a genuine grassroots movement that got hijacked. Kevin: It sounds like a classic startup story. A passionate group has a great idea, and then a big, cynical corporation comes in, buys them out, keeps the branding, and just uses the customer list to sell junk. The original mission is gone. Michael: That's a perfect analogy. And the "corporation" was a mix of powerful D.C. groups and politicians who saw the energy and wanted to monetize it. And the person who mastered this new environment better than anyone was, of course, Donald Trump. But before Trump, Kinzinger saw the dysfunction up close with the Speaker of the House, John Boehner. Kevin: Boehner always seemed like a guy from another era, even when he was in charge. Michael: Kinzinger paints him as a leader who genuinely wanted to govern but was trapped. He quotes Boehner describing his job as "fighting one batshit idea after another" from his own party. The Tea Party faction saw compromise as a betrayal. They wanted to shut down the government, default on the debt—anything to make a point. Kevin: But here’s the tough question, and Kinzinger is pretty honest about this in the book. He played the game for a while, right? He went on Fox News, he delivered the talking points. Where does he draw the line between being a team player and being complicit in the rise of 'Crazytown'? Michael: He struggles with that. He admits the fame and attention are addictive. But he also points to moments where he broke ranks, like arguing for cuts to the defense budget, which got him branded a "traitor" by Illinois Tea Party groups. He was trying to be a principled conservative within the party. Kevin: But the party was leaving him behind. It was no longer about conservative principles; it was about loyalty to a personality. Michael: Exactly. He describes the 2016 election as the moment the dam broke. He supported Jeb Bush, and he watched in horror as Trump just bulldozed him with insults like "low-energy Jeb." Policy didn't matter. Experience didn't matter. All that mattered was the show. Kevin: And when Trump wins, Kinzinger is on the outside looking in, within his own party. He tells that brutal story about being at a local GOP watch party on election night 2016. Michael: It’s heartbreaking. He didn't endorse Trump, and an elderly woman who had always supported him comes up and says, "If he loses, it’s your fault." He's been completely ostracized by his own tribe. He realizes the party he knew is gone. Kevin: And that sets the stage for the ultimate test of his principles. The show he'd been watching from the sidelines is about to turn into a real-life attack on the institution he swore an oath to defend. Michael: That line gets drawn in sharp, permanent ink on January 6th, 2021.

Kevin: The stories from January 6th are still so raw. How does Kinzinger describe that day from his perspective? Michael: It's chilling. He knew violence was possible. He actually brought a gun to his office in the Capitol complex that day for self-defense. He's hunkered down, watching the chaos unfold on TV, and he says he just thought, "It had all come to this." All the conspiracy theories, the rage, the performance politics—it was no longer a show. It was a physical assault on American democracy. Kevin: And he doesn't wait. He's one of the first Republicans to go public and call for Trump's removal from office using the 25th Amendment. Michael: The very next day. And then he becomes one of only ten House Republicans to vote for impeachment. This is the moment he fully embraces being a "renegade." But to really understand the stakes, you have to hear the stories he shares from the January 6th Committee. Kevin: I think people need to hear them. It's easy for it to become an abstract political event. Michael: He talks about the testimony of Capitol Police officer Michael Fanone. Fanone described being dragged into the mob, beaten, tased with his own weapon until he had a heart attack, and hearing people chant to kill him with his own gun. Kevin: My God. Michael: And then Fanone says, with this raw anguish, that the worst part is the aftermath. He says, "But too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist, or that hell wasn’t actually that bad." He’s talking about politicians and media figures downplaying the attack. Kevin: That’s the ultimate betrayal. To go through that trauma and then have people from the institution you were protecting tell you it didn't happen, or it wasn't a big deal. It’s a form of gaslighting an entire country. Michael: And this is where Kinzinger finds his new mission. He joins the committee, knowing it's political suicide. And this is where he fully embraces being a "traitor" to the party. But what's so powerful, and so painful, is that he's not just fighting Trump. He's fighting his own tribe. Kevin: Right. The book details the fallout. The threats, the shunning... Michael: It's brutal. He shares a letter sent to his wife, addressed to her by name, that says he will be "executed" and that she and their infant son, Christian, will be "joining Adam in Hell." The letter even calls it blasphemous that they named their son Christian. Kevin: That’s not political disagreement. That's pure, venomous evil. And it's coming from his own constituents, his own side. That's a different kind of war. It’s not a foreign enemy; it’s your neighbors. Michael: And that’s the crucible where his definition of courage is forged. It’s not about charging into a fight you know you can win. It’s about standing your ground when you know you’re going to lose, at least in the short term, because your oath demands it.

Kevin: So after all of this—the military, the political battles, the insurrection, the threats—what is the final takeaway? Where does he land? Michael: He lands on the idea of the oath. Ultimately, Kinzinger argues that the 187 minutes Trump sat in the White House dining room watching the riot on TV and did nothing to stop it was the supreme violation of his oath of office. It was a complete dereliction of duty. Kevin: Because his job, his only job at that moment, was to protect the country and the Constitution. Michael: Exactly. And Kinzinger concludes that our laws are just words on paper. They mean nothing without public servants who are dedicated to the rule of law and who believe that their oath matters more than party tribalism, more than the cheap thrill of scoring political points. Kevin: It makes you wonder. We all have our 'tribes'—at work, in our families, in our communities. What does it take for any of us to stand up when our own group goes off the rails? It’s easy to criticize the other side, but it's incredibly hard to criticize your own. Michael: That’s the question he leaves us with. He says the answer isn't more anger. He believes the answer is an upwelling of goodness and what he calls "civic compassion." He has this great line: "Turning the other cheek while holding your ground is a powerful thing." Kevin: That’s not weakness. That’s a different kind of strength. It’s not about winning the argument; it’s about refusing to let the argument destroy you or what you stand for. Michael: And that, he says, is the real definition of courage. It's not some single heroic act. It's continuing, day after day, despite the fear of confrontation, of rejection, of harm. It's choosing truth when lies are easier. Kevin: It's a heavy but necessary message. It feels like a roadmap for how to be a citizen in a time of crisis. Michael: It's a question worth asking ourselves. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Find us on our socials and share what courage means to you in these divided times. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.