Adam Kinzinger Doesn’t Understand Trump’s Attacks on Jack Smith

Adam Kinzinger’s recurring mistake is not that he fails to notice what President Trump is doing. It is that he keeps insisting on a personality-based explanation—narcissism—for behavior that is more simply and more accurately explained as power accumulation and regime defense.

In the clip at issue, Kinzinger treats Trump’s attacks on Jack Smith as the byproduct of an ego wound: Trump cannot bear being remembered as a loser, therefore he obsesses, therefore he lashes out. That account is rhetorically tidy. It is also strategically useless.

Because this is not therapy. It is coercion.

If you want to understand why Trump and his goons in Congress attack Jack Smith, you do not need an armchair diagnosis. You need to recognize the oldest play in authoritarian politics: intimidate the enforcers to make law unenforceable.

The point is not to win an argument about January 6. The point is to make the next prosecutor, the next investigator, the next civil servant—anyone who might think to stand up—calculate the price of doing their job and decide it is not worth it.

That is the entire mechanism. It is that simple.

Kinzinger is late to the party

Kinzinger is not exactly stupid. But he is consistently late, and he tracks pop explanations the way weaker analysts track weather: whatever story feels most intuitive in the moment becomes the story. That is why he keeps returning to personality as the master key. It flatters the audience. It feels like insight. And it requires nothing—no structural analysis, no strategy, no prescription beyond dunking on Trump’s character.

But personality explanations are a trap. They turn an intentional campaign of intimidation into a psychological soap opera. And once you’ve done that, you have already conceded the fight.

The real reason: intimidation as policy

When a regime attacks an investigator, it is not because the leader is sad. It is because the investigator is dangerous.

Jack Smith represents accountability. Accountability is the one thing an authoritarian project cannot tolerate, because accountability constrains power.

When power is the objective, the rule of law becomes the enemy. The solution is therefore predictable: discredit the legitimacy of the investigator, smear the process, weaponize committees, and flood the information space with procedural noise—anything that makes enforcement costly, politically radioactive, and personally frightening.

This is deterrence doctrine. It is the same logic as a public execution in a medieval square, updated for a modern bureaucracy. You make an example, loudly, so others learn the lesson of fear.

That is why the attacks are never merely personal. They are institutional. They are designed to create a chilling effect.

The Raymond Method makes this obvious

Under the Raymond Method, Kinzinger’s narcissism thesis collapses immediately.

Pillar One: Regime Security Is the Prime Directive. President Trump’s survival—political, legal, personal—depends on impunity. Anyone who can impose consequence is a regime threat. Therefore the regime targets the consequence-imposers.

Pillar Two: Asymmetric Warfare. The regime does not fight on the terrain of facts. It fights on the terrain of perception, procedural haze, and intimidation. It is not trying to persuade you. It is trying to exhaust you, confuse you, and frighten the people whose courage matters.

Pillar Three: Byzantine Traitor-General. A captured state is a weakened state. When you train the government to fear enforcing its own laws, you hollow out the republic from the inside. Under the working thesis—Trump’s alignment with Kremlin interests—this is not incidental. It is functional.

In short: this is not personality. This is an authoritarian technique.

Why the narcissism frame is politically harmful

The narcissism story does not just misdiagnose the problem. It misdirects the audience toward an unserious remedy.

If the cause is narcissism, the implied counter is mockery, exposure, and endless commentary. If the cause is power accumulation through intimidation, the counter is discipline, solidarity, and refusal.

You do not defeat coercion by describing the coercer’s feelings. You defeat coercion by making coercion fail.

That is what Kinzinger’s analysis never reaches, because he keeps stopping at character.

The actionable counter: refuse the intimidation equilibrium

Once you understand the real purpose of the attacks, the prescription becomes obvious.

Stand tall. Fight back. Do not let these assholes cow you.

That is not a slogan. It is a strategic requirement. Intimidation works only if targets internalize isolation and believe they will be abandoned.

The counter is collective reinforcement: visible institutional backing for investigators and prosecutors, rapid exposure of retaliatory moves, material protection for staff, and a political culture that treats threats against enforcers as an attack on the public’s right to law.

Authoritarian politics depends on teaching everyone to look away.

The democratic counter depends on teaching everyone to stand up.

The bottom line

Kinzinger wants to explain President Trump’s behavior as narcissism because it is an easy story and it sounds like insight. But it is not insight. It is a distraction.

The clear and easy-to-understand reason Trump and his goons attack Jack Smith is to scare anyone who might think to stand up to them. This is about power, not personality.

And if you want an actionable counter, you must stop narrating Trump’s inner life and start contesting his coercion strategy.

Refuse to flinch. Refuse to normalize. Refuse to be ruled by fear.

That is how intimidation fails.

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