Republican Iowa Rep. Steve King doubled down Monday on his tweet which said, “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
King tweeted the statement out in support of far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Wilders’ PVV party is neck-and-neck with the ruling VVD party in polling for Wednesday’s general election in the Netherlands. Wilders has vowed to leave the European Union, shut down mosques in Holland, and close the country’s borders.
“Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” King wrote. The Iowa representative has previously tweeted out his support for Wilders and French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
After this tweet, however, King was attacked by members of his own party. “I do not agree with Congressman King’s statement. We are a nation of immigrants, and diversity is the strength of any nation and any community,” Iowa Republican Party chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement.
Republican Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who is Cuban-American, tweeted, “What exactly do you mean? Do I qualify as “‘somebody else’s baby?'”
In an appearance on CNN Monday, Rep. King refused to back down, saying, “I meant exactly what I said.”
“You can’t rebuild your civilization with somebody’s elses babies, you have to keep your birth rate up,” King added. The Iowa Republican said, “it’s a clear message we need to get our birth rates up or Europe will be entirely transformed within a half century or more. Wilders knows that.”
King, though, would stress during the interview that he is a “champion for Western civilization,” not one race of people. “If you go down the road a few generations or centuries, with the intermarriage, I’d like to see an American so homogenous that we look a lot the same,” King said. “I think there’s been far too much focus on race.”
When CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked the Iowa congressman whether a Muslim-American, Irish-American, and Italian-American are all equal, King initially paused. The Republican congressman eventually said that all people are all “created in the image of God,” and that they are equal under the law.
He added, “Individuals will contribute differently, not equally to this civilization and society. Certain groups of people will do more from a productive side than other groups of people will. That’s just a statistical fact.”