[9] King first sought public office in 1977, running for an at-large seat on the Hempstead, New York town council and winning with the backing of the then-powerful Nassau County Republican Party machine led by Joseph Margiotta.

[37] In 2010, when Charles Rangel of New York was censured for ethical violations, King, along with Alaska Representative Don Young, were the only two Republicans voting against.

[41] He opposed McCain's calls for an end to coercive interrogation methods used with suspected terrorists, as well as the senator's 2007 effort to enact a path to citizenship for current undocumented immigrants.

[42][43]The animosity stemmed from the Texas senator not supporting a 9/11-related healthcare bill for police and firefighters, and a statement from Cruz that New York values are socially liberal.

He frequently traveled to Northern Ireland to meet with senior members of the paramilitary group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), many of whom he counted as friends.

[39][64] King compared Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish republican movement, to George Washington, and said that the "British government is a murder machine".

[71] Speaking at a pro-IRA rally in 1982 in Nassau County, New York, King pledged support to "those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.

[78][79] Although disgruntled by Sinn Féin's opposition to the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq,[39] King supported bail in 2008 for an IRA Maze escapee, Pól Brennan.

[83] At a September 2011 hearing conducted by the UK Parliament's Home Affairs Select Committee as part of its "Roots of Violent Radicalisation" inquiry,[84] King defended his 1985 "If civilians are killed" remarks and extolled his role in the peace process as an "honest mediator".

[85] In 2011, King said that his ties to the IRA had been "entirely distorted", arguing that if the accusations were true then "I doubt the president of the United States would have offered me the position of ambassador to Ireland.

[92] In late 2016, King suggested to Donald Trump that a federal program be formed aimed at surveilling the activities of American Muslims.

[41] King supported President Barack Obama's order to kill Osama bin Laden, saying that he knew it was a "tough decision" to make in the situation room.

"[95] King continued to challenge Holder in April 2011, demanding to know why the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), its co-founder Omar Ahmad, the Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust, and other unindicted "co-conspirators" in the Holy Land Foundation "terrorism financing" trial, were not being prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice.

On June 12, 2013, on Fox News, King called for prosecution of Greenwald, alleging that the journalist was said to be in possession of names of CIA agents around the world and would be "threatening to disclose" them.

[102] King suggested in 2014 that "foreign policy was not a major issue" for Obama, as he had worn a light tan suit in August in Washington the day before.

[103] King and Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) asked Congress on March 11, 2015, to make anthrax vaccines that are about to expire and otherwise would be disposed of available to emergency responders.

[106] King supported Trump's 2017 executive order to temporarily curtail immigration to the United States from some Muslim-majority countries until better screening methods are devised.

"[107] In December 2010, King announced that, when he became chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, he would hold hearings on the alleged radicalization of some American Muslims.

While allowing that, "The overwhelming majority of Muslims are outstanding citizens," he claimed some Islamic clerics were telling their congregations to ignore extremism and to refrain from helping government investigators.

[108] King cited Justice Department statistics showing that, over the previous two years, 50 U.S. citizens had been charged with major acts of terrorism and that all were motivated by radical Islamic ideologies.

The hearing included testimony from congressmen John D. Dingell of Michigan, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who was one of two Muslims in the U.S. Congress at the time, Frank Wolf (R-VA), and Los Angeles county sheriff Leroy Baca.

[citation needed] Others to provide testimony included Dr. M Zuhdi Jasser, a secular Muslim and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; Melvin Bledsoe, whose son Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert, is serving a life sentence for killing a soldier and wounding another in the 2009 Little Rock recruiting office shooting;[109][110] and Abdirizak Bihi, the Director of the Somali Education and Social Advocacy Center.

[112] In an article for the National Review, King announced that his second and third Homeland Security Committee hearings on radicalization would focus on foreign money coming into American mosques and al Shabab's efforts to recruit young Muslim men in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

[113] Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, responded by saying that "none of these law enforcement and intelligence officials have backed King's assertions that the Muslim community has not been helpful in thwarting terrorist attacks.

"[114] Thompson wrote King, demanding that the scope of the hearings be widened to include all extremist groups in the United States, irrespective of ideology or religion.

[117] The Council on American Islamic Relations joined fifty other activist and Human Rights organizations, including Amnesty International, the Sikh Coalition, the Japanese American Citizens League and Unitarian Universalist Service Committee in signing a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), comparing the hearings to those held by Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and calling them "divisive and wrong", and "an affront to fundamental [American] freedoms"[118][119] Seema Jilani, a freelance journalist writing an opinion piece in The Guardian, described King as "America's new McCarthy", who was instigating "a bigoted witchhunt.

[124] Walsh added that "Homegrown terrorists are the number one threat facing American families right now, and it would be irresponsible and negligent not to try and identify the causes of their radicalization.

[131][failed verification] King was harshly critical of the Occupy Wall Street movement from the beginning; commenting on October 7, 2011: We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy.

[132][133]King supported New York City mayor Bloomberg's decision to have the NYPD forcibly evict the Occupy protestors from Manhattan's Zuccotti Park; calling them, "low life dirtbags" and "losers", who "live in dirt.

He proceeded to then critique "leftwing editors at the New York Times and the liberal ideologies" of the American Civil Liberties Union, saying both the newspaper and the organization were attempting to "intimidate" critics of radical Islam.