Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is making the strange claim that he was “warned” about the controversy over the racist remarks he made in January, before he even made the remarks.

In an interview with Iowa Public Television’s David Yepsen, King said he had “nothing to apologize for,” and launched into a tirade about a series of white supremacist controversies that erupted during the midterms, for which he was condemned by then-NRCC Chairman Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH).

“There was nothing all the way up to October 24th, on October 25th the Washington Post publishes a story, the headline is false, the first paragraph is false, the story is false, but that build something that Steve Stivers capitalized on, by the way, just a week before the election,” King said.

“From that time forward things went the other way, but we were up, 13 days before the election, we were up 18 points, and by the way this phenomenon is not exclusive to the 4th congressional district, there were multiple congressional districts across America that saw the same kind of drama take place, or somewhere, I should actually say, and we lost 40 or 41 seats. There’s a reason for that. A lot of this was a nearly perfect storm, part of it was orchestrated, some of it was just good luck on their side, but by the time we got the January 10th however I had been warned that something, that they were going to try another move, and they tried another move, and that came out of the New York Times,” King said.

When King’s racist remarks were first published, King did not claim he had been misquoted, but rather that the remarks did not make him a white supremacist.

Watch the clip above, from Iowa Public Television.

[Image via screengrab]

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