Rep. Steve King said it was "ridiculous" to interpret that his comments about "somebody else's babies" was about race. | Getty King: 'Ridiculous' to think he'll be punished for 'babies' remark

Rep. Steve King says he doesn’t expect to face repercussions from his Republican colleagues for his controversial declaration last weekend that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

“That’s a ridiculous proposition,” King told POLITICO, when asked whether he thought Democratic calls for the Iowa Republican to be stripped of his committee posts would persuade Republican leaders. “Nancy Pelosi doesn’t run that.”


Democrats and many Republicans have ripped King’s comments — which began with a Sunday tweet — as racist. Pelosi, the House minority leader, called for Republicans to boot King from the Judiciary subcommittee he chairs. And Democrats continued to hammer away at King on Thursday morning.

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) took to the House floor with King’s tweet blown up on a poster board and called for more forceful denunciations from GOP leaders. He also called out King for comments Monday on a talk radio show in which he said blacks and Hispanics would be “fighting each other” before they surpass the white population in America.

“The American people will not accept the silence of the majority party when one of their own speaks this way,” Gutiérrez said. “I’m waiting for the denunciations, the censure, the rebukes, but I expect I’ll be waiting a long time.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has said he disagrees with King’s sentiments and hoped he had clarified them. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said: “The president believes that this is not a point of view that he shares. He believes that he's a president for all Americans.”

At the Capitol on Wednesday, King rejected the suggestion that his initial comments were about race. “The people that interpreted that are just ridiculous,” he said. “I spoke to civilization, and [if] they don’t know the difference between civilization and race, then they need to go back to school.”

King’s tweet came in support of Geert Wilders, a far-right candidate for Netherlands prime minister, who on Wednesday was dealt a resounding defeat in the country’s elections. King said he was unsure whether the flap over his comments had any influence on Wilders’ performance, though he said he hoped to speak with Wilders on Thursday.

“I hope that it was helpful. I don’t know how it played in the Netherlands,” he said.

King added that the Netherlands is “the most liberal country in Western Europe,” and he said Wilders’ performance in that environment makes him “encouraged for the future.”