We’ve seen press conferences with television personality Donald Trump. And we’ve seen press conferences with Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). But our friends at Right Wing Watch reported yesterday on one of those rare moments in which the two joined together for one special media event in the right-wing congressman’s home district.
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.”
Hunter joked, “If Donald Trump and Rep. Steve King had not planned a press conference together, we probably would have had to launch a Kickstarter campaign supporting the idea.”
King took full advantage of the opportunity: “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.”
The congressman then said President Obama wants “to treat people in Africa as if they were American citizens,” before adding that the president “has pitted people against each other.”
The video is every bit as ridiculous as one might expect.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."