Rep. Steve King said Friday that he doesn’t expect blowback from Republican leaders in Washington or Iowa for issuing support for white nationalism and white supremacy in a New York Times interview — comments the congressman insists were taken out of context.
King, an Iowa Republican, said he initiated a conversation with House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., to discuss the matter and update leadership on how he planned to handle the controversy. King has been in hot water before for using racially charged rhetoric. But this latest episode smacked of outright racism and generated a rare rebuke from House GOP leaders.
King said none of his colleagues in leadership sought him out demanding an explanation. Nor, he said, has any punishment — the loss of committee assignments or otherwise — been threatened. A senior Republican aide in the House said no action is planned. The hope is that statements of condemnation from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and others are enough to neuter the outspoken King.
“Nobody talked to me about it. I did talk to Mr. Scalise; I initiated that conversation a little earlier today, I wanted to let him know what I was going to do — just that I’d give a floor speech,” King told a small group of reporters as he exited the House chamber after those remarks. “I didn’t get any advice to the contrary.”
However, Scalise spokeswoman Lauren Fine offered a slightly different version of events. She confirmed that King approached the whip on the House floor during Friday morning votes to discuss the matter. But Fine said the idea for an apology delivered via a House floor speech came from Scalise.
“During votes Steve King approached the Whip about his remarks, and the Whip expressed to him that his comments were offensive and that ideology should be rejected. The Whip suggested he apologize on the House floor, which King did,” Fine said in an email.
Meanwhile, King said no Republican leader in Iowa has called him to complain or criticize, either at the county level in the 4th Congressional District he represents or at the state level. The Iowa GOP chairman, Jeff Kaufman, has not responded to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
King on Friday afternoon delivered a floor speech defending his record on race and immigration. King is attempting to put behind him only the latest in a string of controversies sparked by his habitual use of rhetoric that many Republicans and Democrats believe are indications of deep-seeded racism. King’s views on immigration policy are similar to President Trump’s.
But in a fresh interview with The New York Times, King crossed the line, offering overt support for concepts that neither Trump nor the most ardent mainstream critics of immigration, legal or illegal, have embraced. “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King said.
[Related: Liz Cheney pans Steve King comments as ‘abhorrent and racist’]
In his second day of trying to clean up the political mess these remarks created, King on the House floor claimed that he was not expressing support for white nationalism or white supremacy, but rather discussing “how those words got plugged into our dialogue, not when the words became offense … It’s how did that offensive language get injected into our political dialogue.”
King also read verbatim the statement that he released on Thursday, which said in part: “Today the New York Times is suggesting that I’m an advocate for white nationalism and white supremacy. I want to make one thing abundantly clear, I reject those labels and the evil ideology that they define.”
Asked if he regretted the remarks, King urged reporters to review his his floor speech. “That stands, that’s why I did it that way. It’s all in the Congressional Record now, so please be comfortable and refer to that,” the congressman said. “I wanted it delivered that way, we’ve got enough confusion.” King described himself as an “American nationalist.”
King, who won a close race for re-election in 2018, already faces at least one credible challenger in the 2020 Republican primary. The National Republican Congressional Committee said it would not work against King in that race but also made clear that it would not intervene on his behalf, as it sometimes does for incumbents.
In general, Republicans weren’t in a hurry to discuss the matter. One Republican congressman expressed “surprise” at how little internal discussion about the matter there was before the House left Washington for the weekend. Another House Republican declined to comment, saying he had not talked to King or read the New York Times story.
“Until I know more about it, I’m not going to comment,” said the normally talkative Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.
