Rep. Peter King slammed Hillary Clinton for offending Catholics in quoting Pope Francis during the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner Thursday night.
King, a New York Republican, spoke to JD Hayworth on Newsmax TV's "Newsmax Prime" Friday and said Clinton crossed the line.
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"A lot of people were offended … certainly the Catholics, near the end when she started quoting at length Pope Francis as if she was on the same side as Pope Francis," King said. "And yet just two nights before [during the presidential debate], she had forcefully defended partial-birth abortion, one of the most horrible, horrible methods of abortion that there is.
"So you have Pope Francis, who is strongly opposed to abortion, you have Hillary Clinton defending the most horrific type of abortion at a Catholic dinner somehow trying to wrap herself in the mantle of Pope Francis. So that offended a number of people."
Thursday's event honored the life of Alfred E. Smith, a former governor of New York and the first Catholic presidential nominee. He died in 1944 at age 70.
Every four years, the presidential candidates attend the dinner and roast each other.
Trump was booed for taking several shots at Clinton, but King said Trump was right to call her out for her staff criticizing Catholics in emails that WikiLeaks made public.
"I thought it was very appropriate for him to bring up the fact that her staff was mocking, in really the worst ways, the Catholic Church, the Catholic hierarchy," King said. "And here she is sitting with Cardinal Dolan, who is a member of that hierarchy, that they feel is so evil or so out of touch or so dangerous."
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