Iowa Republican Steve King is closing out his re-election campaign being who he’s always been: a bigoted asshole. Just days after losing donors over his endorsement of a neo-Nazi sympathizer and a recent meeting with a far-right Austrian political party with Nazi affiliations, a defiant King has moved on to homophobia, stating that he hopes Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor “will elope to Cuba” after the election and railing about the National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) support for a gay candidate:
Republicans, including the NRCC, have tolerated King’s racist shit for years (including Gov. Kim Reynolds, who refused to drop King as her campaign co-chair). But following King’s most recent acts, the NRCC’s chair tweeted out a condemnation, writing that King’s "recent comments, actions, and retweets are completely inappropriate." Recent? Seems like King’s older actions, like comparing immigrants to animals, tweeting out a picture of former President Barack Obama in a turban, and publicly cheering Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rounding up Dreamers for deportation, were appropriate enough?
Despite having just one bill to his name—“in his almost 16 years in Congress, King has passed exactly one bill as primary sponsor, redesignating a post office,” the Des Moines Register reported—King has won his district by huge margins. But that could change this year, with one poll showing his Democratic challenger, J.D. Scholten, within one point of dethroning him. “Embarrassed by Steve King,” read one recent letter to the editor, authored by one of King’s constituents. “It is time for US to wake up and smell the coffee that has now overflowed the pot, sizzled on the heating element, snaked along the counter, and is pooling on the floor.”
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Tuesday, Nov 6, 2018 · 9:24:38 PM +00:00
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Gabe Ortiz
King is now banning Iowa’s largest and most influential newspaper, the Des Moines Register from his election night event, the, well, Des Moines Register reports:
The Register made a routine request Monday for credentials to cover the northwest Iowa Republican’s event Tuesday evening.
Jeff King, who is Steve King’s son and a paid staffer of his campaign, responded Tuesday morning with a terse email. “We are not granting credentials to the Des Moines Register or any other leftist propaganda media outlet with no concern for reporting the truth,” he wrote.
Is King panicking about his seat tonight? Is King just being his usual asshole self? Hopefully, a combination of all of the above.