President Barack Obama’s failure to enforce immigration laws and secure the border could constitute a violation of his oath of office, said Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in an interview with Think Progress. King later agreed with a bystander who called the president a “Marxist Muslim,” saying Obama is, “at least a Marxist. And he surely understands the Muslim culture.”

An interviewer from ThinkProgress approached King at a town hall meeting in Western Iowa with a tape recorder.

TP: I know you’ve been a real leader on the Republican side on the issue of immigration. Obviously a real hot-button issue right now. Do you think that if President Obama doesn’t do more to address illegal immigration and help stop it, that that would be a violation of his oath of office?

KING: Yes. He’s obligated to take care that the laws are faithfully enforced. And he’s essentially said he’s not going to do that. So you can argue that already it’s a violation of his oath of office.

The Iowa Congressman added:

KING: I’ve just started to think about what we need to do and I have made this argument for a long time now that I am in the business of seeking to embarrass the administration into enforcing the law, particularly with regard to immigration.

BYSTANDING CONSTITUENT: He won’t do that. He’s a Marxist! He’s a Muslim Marxist.

KING: He’s at least a Marxist. And he surely understands the Muslim culture.

CONSTITUENT: He surely does. That’s where he grew up with, that’s his culture.

KING: He doesn’t have an American experience. He does not have an American experience.

CONSTITUENT: He didn’t grow up in America.

King’s statement that Obama “doesn’t have an American experience” echoes former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, a likely candidate for president in 2012, who told a conservative blogger in June that because the president spent much of his early life living in Hawaii and Indonesia, he is unable to identify with the average American, and is therefore “detached from the American experience.”

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