King says he’s ‘joined at hip’ with Trump

Staff report
U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is standing by his party’s leading man even as more than a quarter of top Republicans are running for their political lives from an increasingly controversial Donald Trump.

In an interview with The Sioux City Journal published Wednesday, King said too many Republicans are overreacting to Trump’s sexually explicit comments about women in 2005 out of fear they could lose races by continuing to back Trump.

King, The Journal’s Bret Hayworth reports, argued just the opposite, saying that abandoning the party’s standard bearer this late in the campaign could have disastrous results down ballot.

“In reality, your presidential nominee and the congressional candidates — House and Senate — are joined at the hip,” King said.

“We want Donald Trump to win going away, because that lifts everybody up on the ticket,” King said. “For me, it is incomprehensible that there would be people on the ballot around the country that would decide that they are going to separate themselves and distance themselves from Trump.”

King said he would continue to appear with Trump at campaign events in Iowa if asked, The Journal reports.

According to CNN, King warned Tuesday that a purge of GOP party elites might be necessary, saying “the establishment wing of the party could simply be amputated out in this effort that’s going on right now.”

“They’ve gone so far out on this limb,” King said on the Laura Ingraham radio show.

In the Sioux City Journal interview, King said he doesn’t defend Trump’s comments about women on the “Access Hollywood” video.

“Nobody defended it, including Donald Trump,” King said. “He apologized. And so there is not much more to be said about that. It is what happened, and I wish we’d never heard those words, I wish it hadn’t been part of the campaign, I wish it hadn’t been brought into it. But it has, and so, no one defends it, including me.”

USA Today reports that 26 percent of Republican governors and members of Congress refuse to endorse Trump.

Kim Weaver, the Sheldon Democrat seeking to unseat King in Iowa’s 4th District, issued a statement Tuesday strongly criticizing the congressman’s support of Trump.

“The response of many of us as we watch Republicans fleeing this sinking ship has understandably been, ‘What took you so long?!,’ ” Weaver said in the statement. “Still, at least admission of sexual assault is a bridge too far for a growing number of GOP politicians. Not for Steve King, though.

“Steve King has always put party before country. Today he put party before his wife, his daughters-in-law, his granddaughters and all of the women of Iowa, the United States and the world.”