[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 126 (Thursday, July 25, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H7457-H7460]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NEWS MEDIA CREATES FALSE NARRATIVES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to have the 
opportunity to address you here on the floor of the United States House 
of Representatives and continue some of this dialogue.
  I am changing the subject a little bit here this evening, Madam 
Speaker. I wanted to take up the topic that had this House of 
Representatives tied up in knots last January, about January 15 or so.
  I was the direct subject of those things, and it has to do with, to 
refresh people's memory, a misquote on me that came out of The New York 
Times that alleged that I had tied three phrases together. Two of them 
are odious ideologies, and one of them is one of the most meritorious 
ideologies that the world has ever seen. Those two, it was a misquote 
by The New York Times.
  I believe that I have introduced a document that has been publicly 
available since sometime last March 6, it is dated, that makes it very 
clear that The New York Times misquoted me and that a lot of the media 
out there that went into a hyperventilation fit was jumping on an issue 
that we have seen the pattern of many times over.
  I came across a little comment about The New York Times that said, 
``All the news that fits the narrative.'' Well, that seems to be what 
happened last January 10, when they wrote a story on me about all the 
news that fits the narrative, the narrative that they had created, not 
necessarily the facts.
  I would point out, Madam Speaker, that there has been a whole series 
of narratives out here that turned out to be inactionable or, perhaps, 
false. I would say that the biggest one and the one that tied America 
up in knots the longest and most intensely were the allegations against 
Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
  Of all of the folks who had accused him, none of their allegations 
held up. They were not corroborated in any way. It was clear that he 
was targeted because they didn't want a conservative constitutionalist 
sitting on the bench.
  I am very thankful he is sitting on the bench, and I am also very 
thankful and grateful of the way he conducted himself throughout those 
hearings.
  That is not the first time we have seen this. I felt great sympathy 
for Justice Clarence Thomas when he endured what he referred to as a 
high-tech lynching back in the early 1990s. The allegations made 
against him were hyperventilation of the first order, and it was maybe 
the worst that we had seen.
  I go back even further to Judge Bork, who became a verb when he was 
``borked'' by the United States Senate. Allegations against him became, 
at a certain point, untenable and unsurvivable, from his career 
standpoint.
  These people that I have mentioned so far were all wronged.
  Let me put another one in, Madam Speaker: Covington Catholic boys 
down here by the Lincoln Memorial, standing there, respectfully and 
patiently, while a musical device was being pounded in front of one 
young man's face.
  That turned into better than a week of intense media assaults and 
attacks, verbally and keyboard-wise, against those Covington Catholic 
boys because the media's narrative fit their narrative.
  All the news that fits their narrative, but not the truth, and not 
stepping back to take an objective look to try to understand what is 
going on.
  It is seldom that the world is as bad as the media would like to tell 
us that it is. The Covington Catholic boys were exonerated when the 
camera was panned back, and we looked at it as America within the full 
context of what was going on. They were patiently enduring and 
experiencing something that I am sure was a unique experience for them.

  They hadn't spent time to speak of here in Washington, D.C. They 
hadn't been involved in a demonstration of that kind. Just innocent 
young men, clean-cut, one of them wearing a Make America Great cap, 
probably more of them doing that, and patiently there.
  People would say: Have you ever seen such a punchable face? I would 
call it a very innocent face of a young man who kept a tight little 
smile on his face while he waited for that drum to be finished being 
beat in front of his face.
  I would add another one about that same period of time, Madam 
Speaker, Michael Cohen, the President's attorney at that period of 
time, or former attorney. The news media was all over that Michael 
Cohen had been directed to lie to Congress by the President of the 
United States, Donald Trump. That was a story that lived for 4 or 5 or 
more days until the truth came out that that narrative was false.
  False narratives on Justice Kavanaugh, false narratives on the 
Covington Catholic boys, false narratives on Michael Cohen.
  Then, we had, at about the same time, the story on Jussie Smollett, 
who said that he had been attacked and, apparently, attempted to be 
lynched by some folks of the opposite race that he is.
  It turned out that, when we saw the videos of who was buying this 
rope and the other material in the store not very far from there, those 
folks were not there to attack Jussie Smollett because of anything to 
do with race. It had to do with what surely appears to be a hoax. Now, 
we have a Federal investigation into the prosecuting attorney in 
Chicago who found a way to turn Jussie Smollett loose.
  That is another case where the narrative that was delivered by the 
media day after day after day was false, but it was the narrative that 
told the story that they wanted to be told, all the news that fits the 
narrative.
  We have another one here that just recently passed behind us just a 
few days back. Georgia State Representative Erica Thomas made an 
argument and cried in front of the media that she got into an 
altercation in a store and was told by a man to ``go back where you 
came from.''

                              {time}  2015

  And after that was scrutinized, and after the video was watched, and 
after the people that were witnesses there finally came forward and got 
their narratives out, we found out that that story wasn't true either. 
It was all the news that fit the narratives of The New York Times and 
others, but it wasn't true, and she finally admitted it.
  I have just listed some along here.
  Madam Speaker, here are some other stories that were put before us 
where there has been no consequence and no action taken; there is 
Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia, just across the Potomac, who was 
either the fellow in blackface or the fellow in the KKK costume. We are 
not sure which but, apparently, he is one of them, but no action was 
taken on that.
  That was a long time ago. I am okay with acknowledging what took 
place; looking at the man that he is today. But the hyperventilation 
around that was very intense, and it was also a narrative that the news 
media wanted to be true.
  I believe one of those two things seems to have a lot of legs.
  Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, multiple accusations of sexual 
assault; no action down there.
  The Attorney General Mark Herring confessed that he was in blackface. 
No action down there. So there is a stalemate in Virginia.
  No consequence for these three allegations in Virginia. No 
consequence so far for Jussie Smollett. No consequence so far for Erica 
Thomas. We saw all those things.
  Madam Speaker, by the way, I will point out that I have not been 
critical of the statements made by Members of Congress, no matter how 
much press they have gotten.
  The Quad Squad has gotten a lot of press for certain statements. They 
do have a right to freedom of speech. But with regard to AOC, and Ilhan 
Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, some of those statements 
that are made are on their face pretty stark.

[[Page H7458]]

  I think our job here in America is to recognize that people have a 
right to freedom of speech. It is a constitutional guarantee.
  I sat with some people that were, I will say, significantly seasoned 
in the world and in the business world. These folks were out of Europe. 
And I said to them: You need constitutional protection for freedom of 
speech in the same way, along the lines that we have in America, 
because we are protected. We can say what we want to say; freedom of 
speech, religion, the press, and to peaceably assemble, and to petition 
the government for redress of grievance. That is America.
  The ability to express our thoughts and our ideas and freely exchange 
them with others generates other ideas. Bad ideas drift by the wayside 
after they are examined in open public dialogue; and good ideas get 
legs, as you saw tonight with Congressman Yoho lifting his immigration 
bill up before everyone for an opportunity to debate.
  Good ideas sustain themselves. Bad ideas, if you have a rational 
public that believes in the age of reason--and we need to be sustaining 
this age of reason--then the world gets to be a better place.
  If we suppress thoughts and we suppress dialogue, if we tell people 
they don't have freedom of speech, if we punish them for exercising 
their constitutional right to freedom of speech, it diminishes all of 
us because then we don't have competing ideas. We only have the 
repetition of politically correct utterances; and that is not going to 
sustain the greatest nation the world has ever seen. It was built on 
these freedoms.
  America was built on freedom of speech, religion, and the press, the 
Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, the property rights 
that are in the Fifth Amendment, no double jeopardy, you face a jury of 
your peers. And the rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution 
devolve to the people or the States respectively.
  We are built on free enterprise, capitalism, and Judeo-Christian 
values. We are descended from the full flow of Western civilization 
that comes here to America; and today we are the flagship of Western 
civilization.
  Now I have named all of this, but I want to state, again, AOC, Ilhan 
Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and every other Member of this 
United States Congress, and everyone in the United States of America 
has a God-given right to freedom of speech, and thought, and 
expression, and religion, and assembly, and press. And if we don't 
protect those rights, America devolves towards the Third World, not 
ascending onward and upward into the shining city that was so well and 
eloquently envisioned by Ronald Reagan.
  So if we disagree with what someone says, we can state our opposition 
and our reasons why; and we need to have respectful disagreement here 
in this Congress.
  The debates that have taken place here over the years have shaped the 
fabric of America. We often say this is the greatest debate body in the 
world here. I am not as convinced of that today, or this year, as I was 
up to this point.
  When I see that there was a false allegation made against me, a 
misquote in The New York Times, intentional or not, has turned into 
something that is supposedly a fact; and then, the things that are 
clearly not facts are repeated over and over again by a media that 
wants their narrative to be true.
  So there was a resolution that came to the floor here in the House 
that was--I am named in the first paragraph. This is H. Res. 41, on 
January 15 of 2019, and it starts out this way: ``Whereas, on January 
10, 2019, Representative   Steve King was quoted as asking, `White 
nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization--how did that 
language become offensive?' ''
  That is part of the quote, not all of it. It is not even quoted in 
the context that the article quoted it in. But that is actually a true 
statement that is a quote that was published in The New York Times, and 
that is what it says, Whereas,   Steve King was quoted as saying this.
  And then there are a whole series of whereases here that reject the 
odious ideology that White supremacy and White nationalism--there are a 
whole lot of other odious ideologies, and some of them are openly 
defended here on the floor of this House of Representatives, not either 
one of those, not by me, and not by anybody.

  I agreed with those whereases all the way down. In fact, the 
rejection that I had put into this Congressional Record the previous 
Friday was more clear and more stark, and it rejected those odious 
ideologies more distinctly and more effectively than the resolution 
that was introduced by Mr. Clyburn.
  All those whereases I agree with. I got down to the resolve of this 
resolution. It says: ``Resolved, that the House of Representatives once 
again rejects white nationalism and white supremacy as hateful 
expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that 
define the people of the United States.''
  Agreed again.
  So, Madam Speaker, I am making this point that the world seems to 
forget that I supported this resolution, because it was true. All it 
said about me was that The New York--that I had been quoted as saying 
that. That is true. The New York Times quoted me as saying that. I 
don't have any reason to disagree with this. I voted for it, and I 
asked all of the Members to vote for it for a number of reasons; but 
one of them was, I didn't want to see this Congress split over 
something like this.
  Why are we policing something of this nature?
  Why does Congress think that we should police the speech of Members 
on the floor here, especially if it doesn't violate the rules, or 
outside these Chambers?
  Never in the history of the United States House of Representatives 
has a Member been removed from committees because of even an accurate 
quote by the press outside these walls. It didn't take place in this 
building or on the Capitol grounds in any way whatsoever.
  Never has even an accurate quote been used to sanction a Member of 
Congress.
  So we have, instead, a misquote that was in a 56-minute telephone 
interview with The New York Times reporter who asserted--and our 
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that he talked to him on the 
phone--he said he could type as fast as anybody can talk and he can 
punctuate accurately. So I am wondering why he stopped me a couple of 
times in that 56-minute interview and asked me to repeat a sentence so 
that he could get it right.
  In fact, I am going to guess that there isn't anybody that can take a 
conventional typewriter and type accurately and punctuate accurately at 
the speed that I talk in a normal conversation.
  In fact, the wonderful Christy over here, and her magic keyboard, can 
barely keep up at about 250 words a minute when I am rolling along. And 
I feel a little sorry for her, but I like her a lot.
  And so that is my point: There is no reporter that is even capable of 
doing that. But he has convinced Kevin McCarthy that he is the ``magic 
finger man'' and he couldn't possibly make a mistake; not with a 
hyphen; not with comma; not with a voice inflection.
  Oh, by the way, this is going be a little harder now, Christy, 
because Zig Ziglar used to use this to describe how things can be 
misconstrued. And I am saying that this quote was more than 
misconstrued. It just happened to fit the narrative that The New York 
Times and a number of other liberal organizations wanted.
  But Zig Ziglar would put it out this way: There are four different 
ways, and it is going to be printed all the same way in the 
Congressional Record, and then I am going to explain what is different.
  But, Madam Speaker, for those that are, say, watching on C-SPAN, to 
understand how language works, it works like this: He would say, I 
never said she stole the money, with the emphasis on the word ``she''. 
That says one thing: I never said she stole the money.
  Another way to say the same words are: I never said she stole the 
money, with the emphasis on the word ``stole''.
  Another one is, I never said she stole the money, with the emphasis 
on the word ``I''.
  And the last one is: I never said she stole the money, with the 
emphasis on the word ``money''. There are four different meanings that 
come out of exactly the same words.

[[Page H7459]]

  And Kevin McCarthy, and a handful of others, believe that somehow the 
punctuation that was in The New York Times, and the hyperventilation 
that emerged on the punctuation of The New York Times, is justifiable 
to attempt to disenfranchise 755,000 Iowans. And he doesn't remember or 
acknowledge that more people voted for me in the last election than 
they did Kevin McCarthy, or the chair of the Republican Conference.
  And the legitimacy that was conferred upon me was conferred after any 
other allegation other than this misquote that happens to be of The New 
York Times.
  Now, I would add, handling language in this way is this way; that the 
dialogue that went on in that 56-minute interview was a dialogue that 
the reporter refuses to even speculate as to what question it was that 
he might have asked me.
  I'm pretty sure that he didn't have that typed out in his notes 
either, so he doesn't know the question.
  But I am going to submit that it was about the discussion that had to 
do with the weaponization of language; the weaponization of language 
that has been calculated by the left.
  And I happen to know that there was a meeting in the Mandarin Hotel 
here in Washington, D.C. that commenced on November 12, 2016; and that 
was going to be a meeting on how to exploit the Hillary presidency if 
she was going to be President-elect on that day, when that 3-day 
conference began.
  But as it turned out, it was President-elect Donald Trump that they 
had to react to and figure out how they were going to take the highest 
levels of the Democratic Party that emerged in the Mandarin Hotel, 
including George Soros, whose picture was on the front of the article 
written by Politico on that day.
  Out of that came a number of weaponization strategies; one of them 
was the resistance movement. And you saw demonstrations in the streets 
all over America that commenced shortly after that, all the way through 
the inauguration, and for a month or two after that, all these 
demonstrations.

  The idea was, don't let Donald Trump govern. If you weren't 
successful in beating him in the election; if--let's just say, Peter 
Strzok and Lisa Page and those who said they weren't going to ever let 
it happen, and the rest of that cabal, they fell short in the election, 
but they continued to try to deny Donald Trump the opportunity to rule 
and to function as the President of the United States.
  Madam Speaker, that topic has been before us intensively as recently 
as yesterday.
  And so, the strategy that came out of the Mandarin Hotel in that 
conference that began with the Democratic Party at the highest levels 
there, including George Soros and the DNC, on Sunday, the 12th of 
November--it happened to be Charles Manson's birthday, I happen to 
know. I don't know why I know that--but it was about the weaponization 
of terms.
  Our discussion in that interview with The New York Times was about 
the weaponization of terms. And I have spoken of the weaponization of 
terms before that in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, 
and there, it is a clear quote that rolls along that says: It is about 
weaponizing these terms.
  Madam Speaker, I use the terms--if I can find it here, The Christian 
Science Monitor article. It was using the terms Western civilization or 
Western culture as that--why is it that they are trying to turn that 
into a pejorative term? And that interview was clearly done in The 
Christian Science Monitor, and it is clear that that would be the topic 
I was talking about; not advocacy for odious ideologies, but instead 
wondering why it would be that the left would be seeking to weaponize 
the very meritorious term, Western civilization. That is clearly the 
case.
  And I have been attacked for defending Western civilization, but I 
have never defended White nationalism or White supremacy.

                              {time}  2030

  I would point out on this chart, Madam Speaker, when was it used? I 
mean, when were these terms used within our dialogue? Here is one. This 
is a quote from me.
  We went through LexisNexis and went on back and asked from the year 
2000 up until the end of 2018 how many times was I quoted as ever using 
the term ``white nationals'' or ``white supremacy?'' You can see down 
here in the red and in the green, it goes clear on out to the end of 
2018--never. Not one time was I quoted as using either one of those 
terms that identify the odious ideologies in all the LexisNexis 
searches that were there.
  It makes it implausible that, unless those terms were fed to me by 
The New York Times, it is very unlikely that they would have ever been 
uttered in that interview. But I said I am defending Western 
civilization. I have been consistent and clear on that, Madam Speaker.
  And so this chart, the blue line shows the utilization of ``Western 
civilization,'' the times that I have been quoted using the term 
``Western civilization.'' Instead of zero times being quoted as using 
``white nationalism'' or ``white supremacy,'' ``Western civilization'' 
totals, that number shows on here, but here is the utilization of it, 
and it totals 276 times.
  So to keep it simple, I boiled it down to the text here. I was quoted 
as saying ``Western civilization'' in The New York Times--number of 
times quoted as saying ``Western civilization,'' 276 times since the 
year 2000 the press has quoted me as using that term. I am fine with 
that. I proudly defend Western civilization, consistently. But when did 
I ever say ``white nationalism'' or ``white supremacy'' or any 
derivative thereof? Zero times, zero.
  So it is pretty clear that when The New York Times plugs that in, I 
was likely responding to the utilization of those terms in a question 
if those words were even said at all.
  And here is another little chart. The leader made a point that, well, 
you know, that I had defined ``white nationalism,'' and I had defined 
it in an earlier interview by saying that it is a derogatory term and 
it implies racism, but it might have meant something different, I said, 
1, 2, or 3 years ago.
  This is an October 20 interview with Dave Price on WHO.
  So I went back and looked, how often was the term ``white 
nationalism'' used historically, going back to the year 2000 on 
LexisNexis? And you can see this line staying down here near zero, all 
these years from 2000 all the way up to 2015.
  You would say in today's vernacular, virtually zero times--virtually 
no times, excuse me--not zero, but virtually no times was the term 
``white nationalism'' even used in our dialogue until you get to 2016 
where it jumps up.
  These numbers really are 1 to 200 times a year throughout all the 
publications, all the writers, all the things that show up on 
LexisNexis that searches everything in print, including the blogs all 
the way back.
  So this is virtually none, 1 to 200 times a year by everybody. And 
this isn't identified to my utilization.
  Then, in 2016, it jumps from virtually none up to 10,000 times a 
year. And then when you go to 2017, it jumps all the way up to 30,000 
times. And in 2018, it is still up there at 20,000 times.
  So 10, 30, 20,000 times used, virtually unused before. And I 
explained and asserted that they are weaponizing that term, and they 
are injecting it into the political dialogue and using it as a 
pejorative term against anybody they can stick this label on.
  And that is exactly what was going on, and that is exactly what I 
defined in that interview that was so objected to by the minority 
leader of the House of Representatives. I was far more right than I 
thought.
  It was a general understanding I had. Now when I go back and look at 
the facts, I just nailed it cold as to what is going on.
  The left is weaponizing terms. I was explaining that. I explained it 
accurately, more accurately than I thought I had, and what is my reward 
for being so precise? And my reward for being so accurate, my reward 
for defending Western civilization is a pejorative decision that is 
unprecedented in the history of the United States Congress to stifle my 
freedom of speech and to limit, to the extent they could, my ability to 
be reelected going into the future.
  That is the kind of thing we can't have in this Congress is for 
someone to be sitting in leadership that thinks that they have the 
authority to determine who is not going to represent people outside of 
their own district. That

[[Page H7460]]

is destructive to our constitutional Republic.
  The voice of we the people elects the Representatives, and when they 
do so, they have a right to the full-throated representation, and that 
has been denied so far this year because of the arbitrary and 
capricious and false conclusion that has been drawn by Kevin McCarthy. 
And so that situation needs took rectified.
  Anyone who has read this 6-page fact-check document, not one person 
has found a hole in it. Not one rational person has found a hole in it.
  Those that did read it and considered it said: You make some good 
points; yes, it makes sense. Well, we maybe have to find a time to fix 
this, but it is not very convenient right now.
  My point is, Madam Speaker, that if you find that somebody has been 
locked up in jail and the DNA tests prove that they are not guilty, you 
don't wait until they have a good job. You open up the doors and you 
give them back their freedom. And in this case, you give back to the 
people of Iowa the full-throated representation of their senior Member, 
the dean of the Iowa House of Representatives.
  And one of the things my constituents like about me is they always 
get the straight, unvarnished truth whether they like it or not. And 
they will come up and they will say: I don't agree with you on 
everything, but I know that you are telling me the truth; I know you 
are working hard; and I know that you are objective in this, and we 
need somebody that we don't have to wonder what they are saying.

  I don't ever dance around with words. I tell people what I think and 
what I know; and I give them the good news when it is there, and I am 
eager to do so, and I give them the bad news when it is time because 
they deserve the straightest of answers.
  We are straight talkers in the Midwest. We are descended from people 
that came across the prairie to live free or die out there in the 
plains, and we built a pretty good place. It is the best place in the 
world to live and raise a family.
  We have people that are coming back. When they are young, sometimes 
they will go off and look at the rest of the country or the world, but 
they come back, especially when it is time for the kids to go to 
school, and they contribute back to the community, generation on top of 
generation on top of generation.
  That is some of the things that I have worked to establish.
  In the time I have been here in Congress, we have taken Iowa into 
number one, the Fourth Congressional District into number one in the 
production of renewable fuels and energy. By the time you add together 
the ethanol, biodiesel, wind and, now, solar, we produce more BTUS of 
energy than any other congressional district that is a renewable 
outside of this.
  We have gotten transportation routes that have been set up, four-lane 
Highway 20 is done. We rank in the top first or second or third in corn 
and soybeans and in pork and in egg production, right at or near the 
top in all of that. It is a wholesome place.
  When I look outside from my place, I see no neighbors, but I never 
had a bad one. And we have got a crop that looks great this year.
  When I see all those little kids boiling up to the front of our 
church to put their dollar in the basket, those kids are going to grow 
up in those communities, too, and we are going to have generation after 
generation that replicates and improves upon the success that we have 
had.
  But we can't do that if we are going to live in a country where there 
is an arbitrary censorship taking place and no opportunity for me to 
even defend myself.
  Innocent until proven guilty? Well, that is true for a whole bunch of 
these people that I named, but   Steve King, instead, is guilty by 
accusation, guilty by false allegation, even now that I have proven to 
the House of Representatives that, beyond any reasonable question, this 
was a misquote. It was something that was ginned up, and it created a 
political lynch mob.
  It is time to cut the rope and get me back in full force of where my 
constituents deserve, to give them the fullest representation that is 
there.
  I will face any accuser any time, and I will deliver all the facts; 
and if anybody can find a hole in this 6-page fact-check document or 
any other statement that I have made, I would be very happy to look 
anybody in the eye to answer those questions.
  Madam Speaker, I appreciate your attention to this matter here this 
evening, and I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________