Adam Kinzinger wanted a comeback. What he got was a roast. The former Illinois congressman has been out of office for a while now, and lately he has been hinting that he is ready to get back into the spotlight. This week he finally made his move, sitting down for a long, heavily promoted prime-time interview that his team billed as a “fresh start.”
It did not go the way anybody on his team hoped.
For almost an hour, Kinzinger talked about himself. He talked about his time on the January 6 Select Committee, about how misunderstood he has been, and about how the country would be better off if more people thought like him. He teared up twice. He mentioned his own courage at least five times, according to one viewer who kept count.
The ratings were brutal. Clips that his team posted online drew more laughing emojis than views. One short segment, where Kinzinger compared himself to a lonely lighthouse keeper guarding the truth, became an instant meme.
“It was like watching a man give his own eulogy and then ask for a standing ovation,” said Alex Bruno, a conservative commentator who hosts a popular evening podcast. “Nobody asked for this. Nobody was waiting by the phone for Adam Kinzinger to come back.”
Bruno spent nearly twenty minutes of his show on the interview, playing clips and pausing them to laugh. At one point he held up a small toy lighthouse and asked his audience whether anyone wanted to buy it.
“I’ve got one in stock,” he said. “Comes with free tears.”
Kinzinger’s critics have never forgiven him for turning on his own party, and this felt like a chance to remind him. But even some people who once cheered him on seemed a little embarrassed. A few longtime supporters said privately that the interview was too self-focused and that he would have done better talking about real issues.
It is not hard to see the problem. Kinzinger was voted out of a political world that has moved on without him. He has spent the last couple of years on cable panels and social media, but the audience never quite followed. The big comeback was supposed to change that.
Instead, it confirmed what a lot of people already thought.
“He’s a guy who still thinks the cameras are there for him,” Bruno said. “They’re not. They’re there for the lighthouse.”
Kinzinger did respond, sort of. In a post later that night, he said he was proud of the interview and that his critics were only proving his point. That post got ratioed within an hour.
His team has not said what comes next. There were rumors of a book tour and maybe a podcast of his own, but after this week, those plans may be getting a second look.
For now, the internet has decided. The comeback is over before it started, and the lighthouse is still for sale.