Republican tries to prove conditions in migrant detention cells are fine by drinking from a toilet fountain

Republican congressman Steve King is no stranger to controversy - or to making frankly bizarre public statements.

King was last heard from three weeks ago telling a gathering of the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa, that humanity would not have survived as a species without rape and incest.

This extraordinary line of argument cropped up in a discussion about abortion and attracted a storm of condemnation, even forcing similarly-named horror novelist Stephen King to distance himself from the remark after being wrongly blamed.

Before that, he was admonished by the White House in January for appearing to defend white supremacy in an interview with The New York Times by asking:

White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization - how did that language become offensive?

Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?

President Trump's then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called his comment "abhorrent" and "outrageous and inappropriate" as he was stripped of committee assignments and faced calls to resign from fellow Republicans.

In his latest outrage, King has posted a video of himself on Twitter in which he is seen drinking water from a detention centre toilet fountain, apparently as part of a bid to counter concerns raised by Democrats about the conditions being endured by asylum seekers held in the camps in Texas.

Popular New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had specifically made the claim that migrants behind held in the Border Patrol-run facilities were being reduced to drinking from the toilet after she and fellow members of her party returned from a fact-finding visit to the centres in July with upsetting stories about what they had witnessed there.

King's clip was a response to NBC journalist Maura Barrett, who had attended his town hall event in Eagle Grove and reported back on the representative telling his audience about the water being perfectly safe to drink.

The congressman offered the video as proof and sent it to Barrett, adding:

No way was @AOC objectively honest in her #FakeNews spin about the border. Click bait for Snowflakes!

GOP members are no doubt rolling their eyes once again.