Steve King (file photo)
Republican Congressman Steve King says he’s comfortable in letting people say he endorsed presidential candidate Donald Trump last week, but King says it’s not a “full-throated” endorsement.
“The Irish in me lends to the utilization of hyperbole and superlatives, so I have more of them that I haven’t unleashed yet,” King says, “but I will go into the polls and I will vote for Donald Trump and I will bring other people with me and I will grow my enthusiasm as this situation becomes ever more acute.”
King endorsed Ted Cruz before the Caucuses. After all the candidates but Trump had dropped out of the presidential race in May, King said he’d vote for Trump, but he wasn’t ready to make an endorsement. King appeared at a rally in Sioux City last week with Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, and said he’d be voting for Trump and would be urging others to do so as well.
“The press reported that I endorsed him. That’s how they interpreted the language. I’m not going to deny that,” King says. “That’s o.k.”
Trump has surrounded himself with people King says he can work with and King says he “has more good things” he can say about Trump in the future
“I haven’t had a personal conversation with him in months now,” King says. “So that’s probably the one thing that when and if that happens, it makes it more likely that I could come out in the full-throated hyperbole and superlative methodology of endorsement.”
King says “out constitution will be gone” if Hillary Clinton gets to appoint justices to the Supreme Court and that makes Trump’s election of “utmost importance.”
(Additional reporting by KSCJ Radio’s Woody Gottburg)