Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has a long history of eyebrow-raising statements. In 2012 alone, King recommended that gays keep their identities secret at work, called detention for immigrants a "holiday" and compared janitors in House office buildings to the East German secret police for installing energy-efficient lightbulbs.
At a town hall meeting on Tuesday, King added to the list, recounting a House Agricultural Committee hearing in which he claimed to have outed the carefully hidden vegetarianism of the people testifying.
"PETA was there and one other animal activist group. So we just asked them, under oath, 'are you a vegetarian?' And they confessed they were vegetarians, all of them. Well, there they are with an agenda for our diets," said King in a speech captured on video by ThinkProgress.
But unfortunately for King, the story of his vegetarian inquisition was most likely false. After reviewing the transcripts from a hearing on May 8, 2007 that appears to be the event King referenced, ThinkProgress wrote that "there were no witnesses from PETA. King did not ask anyone “are you a vegetarian?” In fact, it was another member -- Steve Kagen (D-WI) -- who asked the Humane Society witness to say he was a vegetarian."
King later joked about vegetarianism at the hearing, saying that he followed a vegetarian diet by eating "concentrated, recycled, enhanced vegetables in the form of meat.”
Watch video of the town hall below: