Steve King, rebuked by GOP for 'somebody else's babies' comment, carves out an exception

Aside from attaboys from former KKK leader David Duke and white supremacist site Stormfront, reaction to Rep. Steve King's (R-Iowa) tweet Sunday that "we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies" has been less than glowing. The head of Iowa's Republican Party disavowed King's tweet on Monday, Iowa GOP strategist David Kochel called it an "articulation of full-on white nationalism," and a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said Ryan "clearly disagrees and believes America's long history of inclusiveness is one of its great strengths."

On Fox News Monday evening, Ryan said he hoped King misspoke. On Fox News Monday night, King said he had not, reiterating points he made earlier on CNN. Tucker Carlson began by noting the bipartisan backlash against King's tweet and Ryan's comment to Bret Baier. "Did you misspeak, and what did you mean?" he asked. "No, Tucker, I didn't misspeak at all. I said exactly what I meant," King said. The U.S. and Europe "have to do something to increase our birthrate, or the vacuum that's created will be filled by people that don't believe in our values here in Western civilization."

"We're at this place now in America where we're seeing people marching in the streets that are pushing back against the American culture, the American civilization," King said. America over the past 25 years has downplayed assimilation and promoted "multiculturalism and diversity, as if that were our strength."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Carlson said King was "defensible and probably right" on that, but "the problem with the tweet was that is suggested there was a racial component to American identity. Do you think that there is?" King said yes, because the left keeps talking about race as well as gender, income inequality, and sexual orientation, but "we are all God's children, we are all created in His image ... What I should have done, Tucker, if I had more characters in that tweet, just added: 'We can't, you can't rebuild our civilization with somebody else's babies — unless we adopt them.'"

King's solution, other than mass adoption, included making everyone in the U.S. speak English so "we can communicate with each other, we can do it instinctively. And on top of that, English is essentially a carrier of liberty, and it expresses freedom and liberty more effectively than any other language on the planet." (Sorry, France, Greece, ancient Rome, and other cradles of Western civilization.) Watch below. Peter Weber