A Timeline of RACIST KKK Republican Steve King’s Racist Remarks and Divisive Actions
nytimes.com
While some Republicans suggested the Iowa congressman’s views were new to them, Mr. King has a long and documented history of denigrating racial minorities.
Steve King departing the Capitol on Monday, after he was removed by Republicans from two powerful House committees.CreditAl Drago for The New York Times
Steve King departing the Capitol on Monday, after he was removed by Republicans from two powerful House committees.CreditCreditAl Drago for The New York Times
By Trip Gabriel
Jan. 15, 2019
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Representative Steve King of Iowa, who was stripped of his House committee seats on Monday night after making remarks defending white supremacy, has a long history of racist comments and insults about immigrants.
Republicans rarely rebuked him until recently, with some suggesting that Mr. King’s language and views were new to them.
“This just popped up on Friday,” Representative Steve Scalise, the second-ranking House Republican, said on Sunday, when asked if the party would penalize Mr. King for saying, in an interview with The Times, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
National Republicans courted his political support in Iowa: He was a national co-chairman of Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential effort and of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ 2018 election. House leadership appointed him chairman of the subcommittee on the Constitution and civil justice. And President Trump boasted in the Oval Office that he raised more money for Mr. King than for anyone else.
Yet Mr. King, who won a ninth term in November, has publicly promoted white nationalists and neo-Nazis on Twitter and disparaged nonwhite groups for years.
[As Republicans rush to condemn Steve King, some ask: Why not Trump?]
2002Mr. King, in the Iowa State Senate, files a bill requiring schools teach that the United States “is the unchallenged greatest nation in the world and that it has derived its strength from … Christianity, free enterprise capitalism and Western civilization.”
Mr. King is the chief sponsor of a law making English the official language of Iowa.
2005Now in Congress, Mr. King introduces the English Language Unity Act, a bill to make English the official language of the United States.
Mr. King sues the Iowa Secretary of State for posting voting information on an official website in Spanish, Laotian, Bosnian and Vietnamese.
In 2006, Mr. King spoke during a rally near Palominas, Ariz., to advocate a fence along the United States border with Mexico.CreditKhampha Bouaphanh/Associated Press
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In 2006, Mr. King spoke during a rally near Palominas, Ariz., to advocate a fence along the United States border with Mexico.CreditKhampha Bouaphanh/Associated Press
2006At a rally in Las Vegas, Mr. King calls the deaths of Americans at the hands of undocumented immigrants “ a slow-motion Holocaust.” He claims that 25 Americans die daily because of undocumented immigrants, an unsupported and illogical leap from government statistics, which years later influences talking points by President Trump.
On the House floor, Mr. King demonstrates a model of a 12-foot concrete border wall topped with electrified wire that he designed: “We need to do a few other things on top of that wall, and one of them being to put a little bit of wire on top here to provide a disincentive for people to climb over the top or put a ladder there. We could also electrify this wire … We do that with livestock all the time.”
2010Mr. King on the House floor, speaking of how law enforcement officers can spot undocumented immigrants:
What kind of clothes people wear … what kind of shoes people wear, what kind of accent they have … sometimes it’s just a sixth sense they can’t put their finger on.
2011Mr. King in a speech opposing the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to cover contraception:
Preventing babies being born is not medicine. That’s not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birthrate get down below the replacement rate, we’re a dying civilization.
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Mr. King has rallied against contraception coverage, saying that birth control is “not constructive to our culture and our civilization.”CreditAlex Brandon/Associated Press
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Mr. King has rallied against contraception coverage, saying that birth control is “not constructive to our culture and our civilization.”CreditAlex Brandon/Associated Press
2012On a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference with Peter Brimelow, a white nationalist, Mr. King referred to multiculturalism as:
A tool for the Left to subdivide a culture and civilization into our own little ethnic enclaves and pit us against each other.
2013Mr. King on why he opposes legal status for Dreamers, who were brought into the country as children:
For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert. Those people would be legalized with the same act.
2015Mr. King invites the far-right, anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders to Washington and appears with him at the Capitol. Mr. Wilders has called Islam “not a religion,” said the Quran was “worse than Mein Kampf,” and called for the closing of mosques.
Mr. King tweets a selfie with Mr. Wilders in front of a portrait of Winston Churchill. Mr. Wilders praises Mr. King for having “the guts to speak out.”
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Steve King
?@SteveKingIA
Churchill looks over the shoulder of the world's leading voice against Jihad, Dutch MP Geert Wilders. @SpeakerBoehner
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2016At the Republican National Convention in July, Mr. King claims thatnonwhite groups haven’t contributed as much as whites to civilization: “This whole business does get a little tired. I would ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people you are talking about. Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
Mr. King to The Washington Post days later: “The idea of multiculturalism, that every culture is equal — that’s not objectively true … We’ve been fed that information for the past 25 years, and we’re not going to become a greater nation if we continue to do that.”
In a tweet during a meeting in Amsterdam with Mr. Wilders and Frauke Petry, the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party, Mr. King says, “Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.”
In October, Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right party, tweets a picture of her meeting with Mr. King, the first elected American official to meet her.
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Échanges très intéressants avec @SteveKingIA, membre du Congrès américain, au sujet de la France, de l'UE et des affaires internationales.
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Also in October, Mr. King meets in Austria with leaders of the far-right Freedom Party, including Heinz-Christian Strache and Norbert Hofer. The party was founded in the 1950s by former Nazis.
2017“Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” Mr. King tweets in his endorsement of Mr. Wilders in Dutch elections.
On March 14, Mr. King defends the tweet on Breitbart radio: “We’re watching as Western civilization is shrinking in the face of the massive, epic migration that is pouring into Europe. That’s the core of that tweet. They’re importing a different culture, a different civilization — and that culture and civilization, the imported one, rejects the host culture. And so they are supplanting Western civilization with Middle Eastern civilization and I say, and Geert Wilders says, Western civilization is a superior civilization — it is the first world.”
On Iowa talk radio, Mr. King recommends “The Camp of the Saints,” a racist 1973 novel about an invasion of Europe by nonwhite immigrants.
Mr. King tweets agreement with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian leader: “Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one.”
Mr. King with voters in Webster City, Iowa, in November.CreditScott Morgan/Reuters
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Mr. King with voters in Webster City, Iowa, in November.CreditScott Morgan/Reuters
2018Mr. King says he does not want Somali Muslims working in meatpacking plants in Iowa: “I don’t want people doing my pork that won’t eat it, let alone hope I go to hell for eating pork chops.”
Asked by a reporter for HuffPost if he is a white nationalist or white supremacist, Mr. King responds: “I don’t answer those questions. I say to people that use those kind of allegations: Use those words a million times, because you’re reducing the value of them every time, and many of the people that use those words and make those allegations and ask those questions can’t even define the words they’re using.”
In an interview with a web publication in Austria, unzensuriert.at, which is linked to the far-right Freedom Party, Mr. King again praises the novel “Camp of the Saints”: “This narrative should be imprinted into everyone’s brain. When you are importing people, even importing one single person, you are importing their culture.”
In the same interview, Mr. King demonstrates familiarity with the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, also known as “white genocide,” which posits that an international elite, including prominent Jews like George Soros, are plotting to make white populations minorities in Europe and North America. “Great replacement, yes,” Mr. King says. “These people walking into Europe by ethnic migration, 80 percent are young men. They are somebody else’s babies.”
Mr. King endorses a Toronto mayoral candidate, Faith Goldy, who had recited the “14 words” used by neo-Nazis and gave an interview to a podcast for the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer.
The Anti-Defamation League writes to Speaker Paul D. Ryan calling for the censure of Mr. King for endorsing Ms. Goldy. The group also notes that the Austrian Freedom Party is “riddled with anti-Semitism and Holocaust trivialization.”
Representative Steve Stivers, chairman of the Republican House election committee, condemns Mr. King in a tweet: “We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior.”
Asked on Oct. 21 on WHO-TV in Iowa, “What is a white nationalist?” Mr. King answers: “First of all, I think you have to be white, but then we’ve got Rachel Dolezal who didn’t have to be black to be black. It is a derogatory term today. I wouldn’t have thought so maybe a year or two or three ago. But today they use it as a derogatory term and they imply you are a racist. That’s the bottom line for that.”
2019“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?” Mr. King said in an interview with The New York Times published last week.
Read more about Steve King and his history of racist remarks
Before Trump, Steve King Set the Agenda for the Wall and Anti-Immigrant Politics
Jan. 10, 2019
Steve King Removed From Committee Assignments Over White Supremacy Remark
Jan. 14, 2019
Steve King’s Inflammatory Behavior Is Met With Silence From G.O.P.
June 15, 2018
Trip Gabriel is a national correspondent. He covered the past two presidential campaigns and has served as the Mid-Atlantic bureau chief and a national education reporter. He formerly edited the Styles sections. He joined The Times in 1994. |
