Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) appeared on MSNBC around 3:40 p.m. EDT today to defend Rep. Joe Wilson's (R-S.C.) claim that President Obama was lying about Democratic health care reforms not ensuring "public option" coverage of illegal immigrants. [MP3 audio available here]
King explained at length about Democrats voted down Republican amendments to put in place an enforcement mechanism to check the legal status of public option applicants.
Of course at the end of his interview, Shuster was unmoved, sticking to his guns that Joe Wilson "was lying" and insisting that Republicans were more interested in making political hay out of the illegal immigration question than safeguarding taxpayers from subsidizing illegal immigration:
DAVID SHUSTER to co-host TAMRON HALL: Regardless of the truth of the matter, and who's telling the truth and who isn't -- and I think the evidence is still pretty clear that the president was telling the truth and that Joe Wilson was the one that was lying -- but putting that aside, there is a political benefit, as you pointed out, for Joe Wilson, Steve King, and other Republicans to keep this going. Otherwise, I think they would have dropped it last week.
You can see the relevant video in the embed above at right.
