President Donald Trump does not share Rep. Steve King (R-IA) “point of view” that “civilization” cannot be restored “with somebody else’s babies,” the White House said on Tuesday.
“I think the President believes that this is not a point of view that he shares,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said during his daily briefing. “He believes he’s the President for all Americans, and so I’ll leave it at that.”
King made the comments in a tweet on Sunday, and doubled down on them on Monday amid widespread backlash, saying that he “meant exactly what I said” in the post.
Asked by WHO’s Jan Mickelson on Monday if there was anything about his tweet that he would change, King said: “Not at all.”
On Tuesday, King told the “Breitbart News Daily” radio show that he did not know “why people hyperventilate over a tweet.”
“If I were going to change anything, first of all, there’s only 140 characters,” he said.
He went on to say that “Western civilization” is “superior,” citing Geert Wilders, an anti-Muslim Dutch politician with whom King has previously associated himself.
“They are supplanting Western civilization with Middle Eastern civilization,” King said. “And I say, and Geert Wilders says, Western civilization is a superior civilization. It is the first world.”
