Politics
Joshua Roberts/Reuters
Republican Rep. Steve King has often come under fire for making racially charged remarks.
- Embattled Rep. Steve King of Iowa is raising money by accusing "Never Trump Republicans" and the "rabid leftist media" of trying to "destroy" him following racist comments he made in an interview.
- King was stripped of his committee assignments after wondering how terms like "white nationalist" and "white supremacist" became offensive in a New York Times interview.
- "Like the Founding Fathers, I am indeed a champion of Western Civilization and American culture - I'm an American nationalist - not a 'white nationalist' or 'white supremacist,'" the email said.
After being stripped of his committee assignments following racist comments made in an interview to The New York Times, Rep. Steve King of Iowa is now raising money by accusing "Never Trump" Republicans and the "rabid leftist media" of trying to "destroy" him.
"As you may have noticed, the unhinged Left has teamed up with Republican 'NeverTrumpers' and is pulling out all the stops to destroy me," King's campaign wrote in a Wednesday email. "Since they were unable to defeat my campaign in the 2018 midterm elections, the rabid leftist media is blasting the airwaves ... to paint me as a 'racist.'"
"White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization - how did that language become offensive?" King wondered to The Times. "Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?"
King's remarks sparked widespread, bipartisan outrage and condemnation. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy expelled King from serving on any committees in the 116th Congress, and the House passed a near-unanimous resolution denouncing white supremacy in all forms.
"Like the Founding Fathers, I am indeed a champion of Western Civilization and American culture - I'm an American nationalist - not a 'white nationalist' or 'white supremacist', as the Times imply in their biased coverage," the email continued.
While King has been continually re-elected since his first run in 2002 despite a long track-record of tacitly supporting avowed white supremacists and making racist comments, his days in Congress could be numbered.
King won his 2018 re-election bid against Democrat J.D. Scholten by just 3.37 percentage points, and the campaign of Republican Iowa State Sen. Randy Feenstra, who is challenging King in the GOP primary in 2020, said Thursday that they had raised a stunning $100,000 within 10 days of announcing the campaign.