Roger Oliver, of Rock Rapids, asked King what he was doing to get back on committees. The outspoken conservative congressman replied he needs to get a "critical mass" of the Republican House caucus to support him, adding some Republican lawmakers have privately told him they think he got a raw deal.

"Kevin McCarthy has been getting a lot of phone calls, and the more phone calls he gets and the more persistent that it is, the more he is gonna realize that it was a bad decision he made, based upon one comment misquoted in The New York Times, reported as fact," King told the audience.

Trump on Friday declared a national emergency at the southern border, a day after he signed a spending bill with $1.3 billion in border fence funding, far short of the $5.7 billion he wanted. His insistence on more funding led to a lengthy government shutdown.

Trump's emergency has drawn threats of legal challenges and sparked a foundational dispute over the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. The move triggered outrage from Democrats, unease among some Republicans and flew in the face of years of GOP complaints that President Barack Obama had over-reached in his use of executive authority.