Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) shared a video of himself drinking water from a toilet-water fountain combination at a detention center near the country’s southern border.
The video appears to be an attempt to push back at critics of the conditions people are held in at the centers.
NBC News reports that King told a story about drinking out of the toilet-fountain hybrid while speaking to a group in Eagle Grove, Iowa on Wednesday, adding that he thought it was “actually pretty good.”
“I actually went into that cell where it was reported that they were advised they had to drink out of the toilet,” King said, according to the news outlet. “I took a drink out of there. And actually pretty good.”
After an NBC reporter tweeted out his remarks, King replied by sharing the video—where he takes a drink and calls it “not bad.”
“Hello Maura: Thank you for covering my town hall, attended by 103 people, in Eagle Grove today. I hope you will include this video in NBC’s coverage. No way was @AOC objectively honest in her #FakeNews spin about the border. Click bait for Snowflakes!” King tweeted on Wednesday evening.
Hello Maura: Thank you for covering my town hall, attended by 103 people, in Eagle Grove today. I hope you will include this video in NBC’s coverage. No way was @AOC objectively honest in her #FakeNews spin about the border. Click bait for Snowflakes! https://t.co/2mWRoxv1uW pic.twitter.com/B0kD3N5Vmj
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) September 4, 2019
King is arguing that the “drinking out of toilets” line the made the rounds is false and that these are water fountains made for drinking, that are just in combination with toilets.
King, seemingly always embattled, was stripped of his committee assignments in the House earlier this year after he questioned why terms like “white supremacist” and “white nationalist” were considered offensive when talking with the New York Times.
Last month Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) claimed that immigration officials told women in a facility that they needed to drink out of toilets—what King was trying to push back at with the video.
The New York lawmaker shared her thoughts on King’s video on Wednesday night.
“There is a genre of videos where GOP House members – who clearly didn’t read sworn testimony that detention sinks were broken- filming themselves drinking out of toilet sinks,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “They’re so anti-immigrant they risk pink eye to show off that they didn’t do the reading #CloseTheCamps”
There is a genre of videos where GOP House members – who clearly didn’t read sworn testimony that detention sinks were broken- filming themselves drinking out of toilet sinks.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 5, 2019
They’re so anti-immigrant they risk pink eye to show off that they didn’t do the reading #CloseTheCamps https://t.co/uYLxQqxSej
Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t the only person to share their thoughts about King’s video.
https://twitter.com/CJMelendez_/status/1169556187341381633
https://twitter.com/shooey_m/status/1169466925153423363
https://twitter.com/droctopu5/status/1169371285543014400
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