Rep. Steve King said Saturday he'll stick with President Donald Trump for all of the "rest of his agenda," two days after slamming the president's plan to protect Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals program recipients and warning that his base would leave him if he kept the Obama-era program.
"I'm going to stick with President Trump, for all the rest of his agenda. And I'm going to do everything I can to help him keep his campaign promises," the Iowa Republican told CNN's Michael Smerconish Saturday. "I'm asking the president to recall the commitments that he's made, keep them, so he can keep his base."
On Thursday, during another CNN interview, King said Trump had been clear on his campaign promises on immigration, but accused him of "preparing to keep Hillary Clinton's promise rather than his own" on protecting dreamers, or people brought to the United States illegally as children.
"I think something is going to have to be reversed here with this president’s policy or it will just blow up his base,” King said Thursday. "This was a straight-up promise all the way through his campaign. I do think that maybe [Nancy] Pelosi and [Chuck] Schumer hijacked the message a little bit and the president has to walk it back."
King has often panned DACA, calling it unconstitutional because it was enacted upon an executive order from President Barack Obama rather than being set in law by Congress. He's also compared it to being a pathway to amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Saturday, he said he's asking Trump to recall the commitments he's made and to keep them so he can keep his base.
"I'm afraid it if there's any one thing that would cause the Trump base to leave him, that is to grant amnesty in any kind of a deal when it was such a strong campaign promise to end the unconstitutional DACA program," King told Smerconish.
There has been some back-and-forth after Trump met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at the White House Wednesday night. The two Democratic leaders had said an agreement was reached, but Trump said the matter was still being worked on. He's also making a strong push for construction of a border wall as part of an DACA agreement.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.