Kinzinger on ISIS: I knew this was an issue for a long time

On Tuesday morning, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and called into question President Barack Obama’s statements over the weekend where he said the U.S. underestimated threats from ISIS.

“Back in January I called for bombing ISIS when they moved into Fallujah,” Kinzinger said. “So somebody like me, a second-term congressman, knew this was an issue, had been very concerned for a very long time.”

Kinzinger said that if Obama reads his presidential daily briefs, “as he should, I’m sure he was warned multiple times.”

When questioned if that was a fair critique considering how comprehensive the intelligence briefings are and could contain dozens of potential threats, he said it was a “fair point.”

“But I’m sure ISIS was not in his briefing just one day,” Kinzinger said. “My guess is this surfaced a lot. My guess is it probably got big enough, especially in this last spring, when his intelligence folks were coming to him personally and saying, ‘Mr. President, this is a huge growing problem’, and yet nothing was done.”

And he then pointed to Osama Bin Laden and President George W. Bush.

“Remember President Bush — there was that one presidential daily brief where it said ‘Bin Laden determined to strike in the United States,’ and he was excoriated for that for a decade,” Kinzinger said.