No, Kinzinger didn’t say Trump won the election

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., has been a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump. 

On Jan. 13, 2021, he was one of 10 House Republicans voting to impeach Trump after the attack on the U.S. Capitol a week earlier. He’s also one of two Republicans on the House select committee that has investigated Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6.

On June 12, Kinzinger told CBS’ "Face the Nation" he thought Trump knew he lost the 2020 presidential election.

But a recent Facebook post suggests Kinzinger himself thought the opposite.

"Kinzinger admits Trump won," the description of a recent video shared on the platform says. 

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Viewers who watched until the end of the nearly 10-minute video would realize that Kinzinger wasn’t talking about the election. 

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stated on October 27, 2024 in an Instagram post

Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz “says that if Democrats win they’ll make (U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) speaker of the house.”

During a recent interview with WGN-TV, a reporter asked Kinzinger, who is not running for re-election, whether Trump had won the "Trump versus Kinzinger war." 

"Yes, yeah, he won," Kinzinger said. "In the short term at least. There’s no use in pretending somehow I scored some major victory and saved the party."

Also in the WGN interview, Kinzinger said voting for Trump in 2020 was a "cowardice move" he regrets.  

News stories made clear that Kinzinger was talking about personal feud with Trump. 

"Kinzinger on fight with Trump: ‘Yeah, he won. In the short term at least,’" The Hill’s headline said. 

Axios ran something similar: "Kinzinger on Trump battle: ‘He won, in the short term at least.’"

But the description of this Facebook video takes Kinzinger’s comments out of important context, and could mislead viewers to believe Kinzinger was admitting Trump won the election. 

We rate that claim False.