President Trump isn’t going out of his way to offend people, according to New York Rep. Peter King.
King, a retiring Republican, hasn’t had the closest relationship with Trump and has often distanced himself from the president. While the two don’t always agree, King told the New Yorker Monday that he doesn’t believe Trump is trying to offend people despite his tendency toward controversial remarks.
“I didn’t see any malice in it, any of that,” King said after being asked about Trump’s controversial spat with “the squad,” when he told Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to other countries to solve their problems.
He later added, “I mean, I’ve never seen malice in him.”
“I don’t see it,” the lawmaker continued. “Now, again, others may, but he seems sometimes genuinely surprised when people take offense to everything. To him, you have an argument, you’re back-and-forthing. You’re solid the next day.”
King was pressed on whether he believes Trump’s promotion of “birther” conspiracies about former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate was racist. The congressman said Trump’s remarks had less to do with race and more to do with his willingness to use any issue to attack an opponent.
“And I don’t know if it was even a racial issue so much as [Trump] could go after you on any issue,” he explained. “But, anyway, that’s subject to interpretation. I wouldn’t have raised birthplace, I never did.”
King made a similar defense of Trump’s claim that there were “good people” on both sides of the argument after the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“He says stuff off the top of his head,” King said. “That, I think, in his mind was the ‘both sides.’ Because I’ve never seen him or heard him say anything racist at all.”
King, 76, announced that he would be retiring after this congressional term. He has been a member of Congress since 1993.
