Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is standing by his comments that President Obama has a “default mechanism” that “favors the black person” in a dispute — and says that Americans need to talk about this.
“I have no regrets about what I said. I stand by what I said because what I said is accurate. It’s factual,” King told Radio Iowa on Tuesday. “I think the president should answer and Attorney General Holder should answer for the Justice Department being used in the way it is, but what I said was accurate and it was objective.”
“You have the professional hyperventilators out there who have the radar screen up all the time, trying to find something that they can twist or embellish. That’s what’s going on,” King added. “I don’t want anybody to think that Steve King loses a minute’s sleep over this.”
King also discussed how he decided to handle the issue when the comments became publicized. “I told my people here that handle my media: ‘Let’s let this cook for a couple of days and see if this pot will come to a boil,’” King said. “I don’t want to put it away in the first day because I think the American people need to have this debate about what appears to me to be an inclination on the part of the White House and the Justice Department and perhaps others within the administration to break on the side of favoritism with regard to race.”
King made the controversial comments on Monday during an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show. Then on Tuesday, a Republican House candidate and a Tea Party group in Colorado both cancelled scheduled appearances by King at events for them this weekend.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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