[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.
____________________