Jason Noble

jnoble2@dmreg.com

Make no mistake: U.S. Rep. Steve King is voting for Donald Trump in November.

But the outspoken conservative congressman from northwest Iowa on Thursday suggested he could work with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

“I’ve sat across the table with Hillary Clinton eye-to-eye, and when you’re working outside of staff and outside of the press she is somebody I can work with,” King said during a speech at The Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.

The admission came as almost an aside within a speech full of praise for Trump, the Republican presidential candidate and GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence. In an interview afterward, King reiterated that he would vote for Trump and encourage others to do so.

“I will go into the polls and I will vote for Donald Trump and I will bring other people with me,” King said. “I will grow my enthusiasm as the situation becomes ever more acute.”

Of Pence, King noted their close friendship after several years serving together in Congress, and said the Indiana governor “fills in whatever you might see as gaps in a Trump candidacy.”

King also endorsed the most famous of Trump’s campaign promises – a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border – although he added that he’d like to see fences constructed on either side of that wall as well.

“We need to secure our border. The most effective way we can do that is build a wall on the southern border,” he said. “I’d add to that first build a fence near the border. Then go up about a hundred feet, build a wall, and then go another hundred feet and build a fence.”

About 60 people turned out for King’s speech, the first soapbox address of the 2016 Iowa State Fair. Among them were perhaps a half dozen demonstrators, including one who held a sign reading “Steve King doesn’t speak for me.”

Iowa State Fair Soapbox schedule announced