King: Boehner ‘should not speak’ on flap over immigrant remarks

Rep. Steve King on Friday warned Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) he “should not speak” about the controversy swirling over the Iowa Republican’s depiction of many young illegal immigrants as drug runners.

{mosads}”I still do not believe that he has seen the video, and I really don’t believe he’s read the text of what I said,” King told radio host Rusty Humphries on Friday. 

When Humphries interjected, “then he shouldn’t speak,” King agreed.

“That’s right, he should not. He should not speak.”

Over the weekend, King told Newsmax that for every valedictorian illegal immigrant, “there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” 

Republicans and Democrats blasted the remarks as insensitive, and Boehner called them “hateful” and “deeply offensive and wrong.”

But King told Humphries that Boehner’s remarks boiled down to calling King names, which indicate the Speaker does not have much of an argument.

“When somebody calls you names and avoids the issue, they have lost the debate, they realize they lost the debate, and the only avenue left is to call names and to try to marginalize,” he said. 

Earlier this week, King took to the House floor to say debate on immigration should not be shut down, and challenged all members to debate him on the issue.

King also said he is still trying to figure out what part of his comments were offensive.

“Nobody has come out and said it’s up higher or lower, it’s 101 or 99,” he said. “So then, I either had the wrong number or I picked the wrong fruit.”

He also reiterated that there are thousands of illegal immigrants in the U.S. prison system.

“I don’t know if there’s another person in Congress that knows that there are 25,064 criminal aliens incarcerated in America today for homicide,” he said. “Now that should shock anybody that the numbers are that great.”