Steve King: ‘Cantaloupes’ Comment Just Like Complimenting Bodies of ‘Olympic Athletes’

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) continued to defend his assertion that the vast majority of young undocumented immigrants are drug smugglers “with calves the size of cantaloupes,” telling Mike Huckabee today that his remarks were no different than complimenting the body of an Olympian.

The Iowa congressman said there was nothing inaccurate or wrong about his claim that “for every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another hundred out there who they weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’ve been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” insisting that “if I offended anybody I didn’t do a very good job of it, but it should’ve been offensive perhaps to drug smugglers but no one else.”

“They’re not just making one trip across the border with 75 pounds of marijuana but it is multiple trips,” King said, “they’re in physical shape for that, just like you can see in an Olympic athlete, that would be obvious to us and I don’t think that would be denigrating.”

He went on to claim that immigration reform legislation “guarantees the permanent destruction of the rule of law, at least with regard to immigration, as far as I can imagine into the future.”