For Iowa Rep. Steve King, there's one candidate who has gone where no candidate has gone before: Donald Trump.
Speaking with Iowa public television this week, King, who has become a kingmaker of sorts in Iowa presidential politics, said he wouldn't rule out endorsing The Donald.
"I surely wouldn't rule out Donald Trump," King said. "He has shown a confidence and leadership and he has been able to step forward and say things that were true, he has been attacked for these things and they have turned out to, many of them, be true."
King, who has in the past made controversial comments about undocumented immigrants, pointed to the media's reporting that a rally in Arizona where Trump railed against undocumented immigrants merely got 4,000 people, while Trump said it was 15,000. King said "a friend" counted the amount of people at the rally and it was indeed 15,000.
"Donald Trump has turned out large numbers of people, he has tapped into that nerve. Now let's see how far it goes," continued the Iowa lawmaker. "We've been in no place like this in history before. Ross Perot didn't do this to this kind of magnitude. We've never had a candidate that came in from the outside and launched himself early and sustained an ascending campaign. We'll see if Donald Trump can do that."
King said Trump has "has tapped into a vast reservoir of the fed up Americans," and that this is causing his surge in the polls.
King added he thought it "foolish" for the real estate tycoon to rule out a third party run while he's at the top of the polls. Still, King said he wouldn't advise Trump to do it.
"If I were advising Donald Trump today, and he being where he is in the polls, I think it would be foolish for him to rule out a third party run because of this, he's at the top of the polls," said King. "So why should he be making decisions on what he might do if he doesn't win the nomination from the Republican Party?"
"If it comes down to that point of a decision to run as a third party candidate, that would not be my advice to Donald Trump," he concluded.