‘Wishy washy with no principles’: Adam Kinzinger gives into irony as Trump and his trolls attack their own rule

Former GOP Representative Donald Trump, fired off a sarcastic jab on June 10 that lit up political X.

“Watching the right now oppose the part of the Second Amendment that guarantees a well-regulated militia under state control is… something,” he posted, with all the dry derision of a man who’s had enough of conservative Constitutional cosplay.

It didn’t take long for people to connect the dots. Somewhere between campaign rallies and Truth Social rants, Trump decided the solution to immigration protests was to unleash the National Guard troops and U.S. Marines into the city, without California’s permission and very possibly without a legal leg to stand on.

A “blatant abuse of power”

Kinzinger’s post is partially right, if an oversimplified reading of the Second Amendment. Still, the irony here is thick. Trump and his right-wing cheerleaders have spent years clutching their pearls over the Second Amendment. But the part about a “well-regulated militia” under state control? Suddenly, they’re not fans. Turns out, they’re all about gun rights… until the “militia” isn’t theirs to control.

California Governor Gavin Newsom isn’t amused, either. He accused Trump of federal overreach and promised a legal fight, calling the troop deployment a “blatant abuse of power.”

Meanwhile, the state’s attorney general quickly filed suit, arguing that the deployment trampled on California’s sovereignty and byed protocols that require state consent before federalizing the Guard.

Legal scholars chimed in to say what everyone else was already thinking: This looks a lot like authoritarian cosplay dressed up in patriot drag.

What Kinzinger is highlighting—none too subtly—is a long-standing contradiction in conservative politics. The right loves to scream about states’ rights when it suits them (usually when blocking federal action on guns or environmental regulation). But when a Democratic governor says “No thanks” to a MAGA military show of force, suddenly the Constitution is just a suggestion.

Kinzinger: You can’t have it both ways

The whole mess circles back to that ever-controversial Second Amendment. Conservatives have long championed the “right to bear arms,” but tend to gloss over the part about militias being “well-regulated” and under state authority.

Legal precedent—namely District of Columbia v. Heller—acknowledged an individual right to firearms, but didn’t erase the fact that the original text was written with organized, state-linked forces in mind.

In other words, the National Guard is exactly the sort of “militia” the founders were talking about. And when the president steamrolls a governor’s authority to deploy it, it’s not patriotic—it’s power-hungry.

Of course, none of this is new in the Trump-Kinzinger feud. Kinzinger’s been a vocal Trump critic since 2020, breaking ranks with his party to denounce the Big Lie, vote for impeachment, and serve on the January 6 Committee.

He didn’t run for reelection in 2022, but that hasn’t shut him up. Now a CNN political analyst, he’s using his platform to call out Trump’s constitutional hypocrisy—and he’s got plenty of material.

So here we are. Trump is flexing federal muscle in a blue state without consent. Conservatives are ignoring the part of the Second Amendment they don’t like. And Adam Kinzinger is on X with a digital smirk.