Nothing New Here But We Need Kinzinger To Keep Saying It

The Illinois Republican broke down why the former president is “one of the weakest men that I’ve ever seen.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) used an insult frequently hurled by the right at liberals to take his latest swipe at Donald Trump.

Kinzinger called the former president a “snowflake” and “one of the weakest men that I’ve ever seen” in an interview Monday with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

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The comment came amid a discussion about Trump’s vitriolic response to predecessor George W. Bush’s speech on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Bush on Saturday said there is “little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home.” Trump hit back Monday, saying Bush “shouldn’t be lecturing anybody” because of his role in “getting us into the quicksand of the Middle East.”

Kinzinger, a frequent critic of the twice-impeached Trump, suggested the response demonstrated a lack of strength.

“I mean, If you think about it, what is strength? Strength isn’t somebody that just gets their dander up every time because they feel they have such a lack of self-esteem, they feel they have to out an attack,” said Kinzinger.

“Somebody with strength is someone who can take criticism, who can go out on a day like Sept. 11 and bring people together,” he continued. “Folks on my side like to use the term snowflake when talking about people that get offended really easy. Well, that’s Donald Trump.”

“I look at who he is as a person and the amount of offended he gets on anything and how he has to go out and punch down,” Kinzinger added. “He’ll attack a radio host, for goodness sakes, when he was president of the United States.”

You can see interview below.

Mental Health In Sports

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September 14, 2021

By Susannah Meadows

Staff Editor, Opinion

I met Venus Williams in 2003 at her home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. I was writing a storyabout her sister, Serena, for Newsweek Magazine. The two lived together at the time, and they were kind enough to let me spend the day there.

What struck me about them was how normal they seemed for the superstars that they were. That day, I saw the two sisters giggle together about a crush Serena had, and heard them consulting on the outfits they were going to wear that night. Venus was excited about the razors she’d seen at the drugstore earlier that day. She couldn’t believe it, but there was a brand called “Venus.” She got such a kick out of seeing her name on the razors, she bought a whole bag of them.

Their house was modest, certainly by celebrity standards. While there were some Wimbledon trophies in the dining room, there were also fabric samples leaning against the wall, evidence of Venus’ interior design business.

I have met and interviewed other famous people, but the Williams sisters stand out to me as the most down-to-earth and well adjusted of any of them.

Eighteen years later, in an essay for The Times, Venus offers an explanation. She describes advice her mother gave her early on, when she was 14, playing at her first professional tournament. “If I wanted to thrive in this sport — and in life — I needed to take care of my ‘whole self,’” Venus writes. “I needed to have a balanced life and not identify myself solely as a tennis player.”

This is what I witnessed at her home all those years ago.

“Paying attention to my psychological well-being has allowed me to love the game of tennis for this long,” she writes. “I guess you could say it’s the thing that has really made me tough.”

In the essay, Venus adds her voice to the chorus of people working to destigmatize mental illness. She calls for better access to mental health services for those who need help.

“You can’t divorce mental health from anything you do,” she writes. “It impacts your physical well-being, your decision-making, your ability to cope with difficult moments.”

Read her full essay here.

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