Donald Trump travelled to Iowa to campaign for Rep. Steve King this past weekend, and their joint press conference was just about as ridiculous as you might imagine.
The two heaped praise on one another, with Trump calling King “a special guy” and “a smart person with really the right views on almost everything” and King gushing that “time after time, when the hand of Donald Trump reached out and touched something, it turned into something good for America.”
And they tried to outdo each other with criticism of President Obama, as Trump evaded questions about his own plans to run for president while blaming Obama for such offenses as turning major U.S. airports into “third-world airports.”
But it was King who really took the opportunity to shine. In video captured by the Iowa Republican, King went on a long tirade claiming that America is becoming “a third-world country” because of “the things that are coming at us from across the border,” including illegal drugs, Central American children of “prime gang recruitment age,” ISIS, a childhood respiratory illness that has spread in recent weeks, and the Ebola virus.
The ISIS and respiratory disease claims are based on unsubstantiated reports in the right-wing media, while there is absolutely no link between border enforcement and Ebola or the Oklahoma beheading incident.
Later, in response to a question about President Obama’s supposed penchant for golf, King mused on how President Obama wants “to treat people in Africa as if they were American citizens.”
“What is his vision for this country?” he asked. “He must think now that he’s president of the world, that he’s going to treat people in Africa as if they were American citizens and somehow we can’t define this American sovereignty or American citizenship.”
He went on to accuse the president of causing racial division in America — “he has pitted people against each other down the lines of divisions that are God-given characteristics” — while touting his own credentials as a unifier:
“I want to pull us all together under those principles to build America. That’s freedom of speech, religion, the press, the right to keep and bear arms — whether that’s to pick up a shotgun and shoot a pheasant or pick up a seven iron and discipline your husband.”
