Steve King’s Racist Remarks and Divisive Actions: A Timeline - The New York Times

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.

Image Steve King departing the Capitol on Monday, after he was removed by Republicans from two powerful House committees. Credit Credit Al Drago for The New York Times

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.

2002

2005

Image In 2006, Mr. King spoke during a rally near Palominas, Ariz., to advocate a fence along the United States border with Mexico. Credit Khampha Bouaphanh/Associated Press

2006

2010

Mr. 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.

2011

Mr. 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.

Image Mr. King has rallied against contraception coverage, saying that birth control is “not constructive to our culture and our civilization.” Credit Alex Brandon/Associated Press

2012

On a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference with Peter Brimelow, an open 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.

2013

Mr. 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.

2015

2016

2017

Image Mr. King with voters in Webster City, Iowa, in November. Credit Scott Morgan/Reuters

2018

2019

Read more about Steve King and his history of racist remarks

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. @ tripgabriel Facebook

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On the Record: Incendiary Remarks and Divisive Actions

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