How messed up are Trump Supporters?

[Angrboda]

Steve King dared a conservative magazine to release audio of him calling immigrants ‘dirt.’ It did.

Rep. Steve King, the newly reelected Iowa Republican with a history of incendiary comments about race and immigration, dared a conservative magazine to show evidence that he had called immigrants “dirt.”

“Just release the full tape,” King, who eked out a victory last week despite affiliations with white nationalists, told the Weekly Standard’s online managing editor Saturday on Twitter. Days earlier, the magazine reported that King had made an inflammatory joke about immigrants.

The Weekly Standard released the recording — a two-minute audio in which King can be heard bantering with a handful of supporters at the back of an Iowa restaurant during a campaign stop on Nov. 5, the magazine reported. He talked about pheasant hunting and his “patented pheasant noodle soup” sprinkled with whole jalapeño peppers he had grown himself. Around the 1:20 mark, King joked that he’d have to get some “dirt from Mexico” to grow his next batch of peppers because they didn’t have enough bite.

“Trust me, it’s already on its way,” a woman quipped, appearing to refer to the caravan of Central American migrants traveling from Mexico to the U.S. border.

King engaged, saying: “Well, yeah, there’s plenty of dirt. It’s coming from the West Coast, too. And a lot of other places, besides. This is the most dirt we’ve ever seen.”

The following day, on Election Day, Weekly Standard assistant opinion editor Adam Rubenstein, who was covering the campaign event and has been critical of King, published an article about the conversation. It included a transcript but not the audio.

In a statement to The Washington Post on Monday evening, Sarah Stevens, King’s chief of staff, accused the Weekly Standard of misrepresenting the congressman’s comments and conjuring a false story. Stevens said the congressman believed the supporter was referring to dirt coming from the “leftist media,” not immigrants. In response to the supporter, King repeated similar comments he had been making during the campaign — that the “leftist media” and liberal multibillionaires from coastal states were trying to smear him, Stevens said.