Documentary Film [View all]
The Last Republican, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend and is still seeking distribution, frontloads the barbed exchanges between the filmmaker and his subject, who seem to share little in common beyond being born in Illinois. You have contempt for what I believe, Kinzinger says to Pink early on, and shortly thereafter he characterizes the director as being basically a communist. (Progressive, Pink faintly mumbles off-camera.) Although he was a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention in August, Kinzinger is no political moderate. He may have thrown his weight behind Kamala Harris in this election cycle, but as he told the Los Angeles Times in Toronto, thats in part because her approach to foreign policy is more hawkish than Trumps. Swept into office in the 2010 elections as part of the tea party wave, Kinzinger pushed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to preserve the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funds for abortions. So he wasnt an obvious candidate to break with his party in 2021, when he was one of 10 House Republicans to vote in favor of impeaching Trump, and one of two to serve on the Congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks.
Slate.com