Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who has endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential run, said in an interview with Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon yesterday that the success of “anti-establishment candidates” like Cruz and Donald Trump in the Republican primary shows that Republican voters are channeling the spirit of the American Revolution.

King attributed the success of Cruz and Trump to frustration that Republican leaders in Congress “haven’t followed through on their promises” to repeal the Affordable Care Act, block executive actions on immigration, or call out the president “on his constitutional violations of all kinds.”

He explained that it all started with the Tea Party, which he described as a Christian conservative movement with an energy that “goes back to the pipes of the Revolutionary War” and that is now reflected by the majority of the Republican electorate.

We have watched this within the Tea Party, and they are full-spectrum, conservative Christian, constitutional conservatives for the most part — and they don’t exclude people who are conservatives that happen to be of another faith or religion at all, they’re very welcoming to all people that would join the cause — but that energy and fervor that goes back to that, let’s say goes back to the pipes of the revolutionary war, that’s something that motivates us, we’re rooted in our history, it’s a common historical experience that we have. And they know that the Declaration and the Constitution were shaped then, and if we fail to adhere to those values, if this is the time to restore and refurbish the pillars of American exceptionalism, that if we fail, our Constitution will be lost. And that’s the 80 percent out there of the Republicans and that’s about the zero percent of the Democrats.

King also explained that he knew he could count on Cruz in 2013 when he held an all-day press conference in protest of the Gang of Eight immigration bill and “for 45 minutes, [Cruz] delivered chapter and verse of everything that I have fought for and believed in with regard to the immigration issue.”

He said that his respect for Cruz was further cemented when he learned that the Texas senator “was raised with the Bible and the Constitution at the kitchen table, side by side, indexed to each other” and that’s when “I knew that it’s in his bones.”