That simple fact is that Rep. Steve King has been terrible for years. The only difference between then and now is that the Iowa Congressman has finally found allies in the White House who share his deplorable views.
While Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller have officially been trying to make America white again for only a few weeks now, King has been attacking Dreamers and comparing immigrants to dogs since the days when Trump’s main gig was still peddling Trump Steaks and firing Dennis Rodman from Celebrity Apprentice. Here’s a recap of some choice selections from King’s Hall of Shame.
Like that time in 2012 when King compared immigrants to selecting a dog—and then claimed he totally meant it as a compliment:
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, compared immigrants to dogs at a town hall meeting yesterday, telling constituents that the U.S. should pick only the best immigrants the way one chooses the “pick of the litter.”
King told the crowd in Pocahontas, Iowa, that he’s owned lots of bird dogs over the years and advised, “You want a good bird dog? You want one that’s going to be aggressive? Pick the one that’s the friskiest … not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner.”
King suggested lazy immigrants should be avoided as well. “You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. Well, we’ve got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet,” King said. “We’ve got the vigor from the planet to come to America.”
Or that time in 2013 when King said that Dreamers have “calves the size of cantaloupes” because they’re hauling pot across the border:
In July [King] made the ridiculous, now notorious claim that for every child of illegal immigrants “who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
House Speaker John Boehner reprimanded Mr. King, calling his comments “deeply offensive and wrong.” But Mr. King still stands by his 100-to-1 claim. On Meet the Press on Sunday he said: “My numbers have not been debunked. I said valedictorians compared to people who would be legalized under the act that are drug smugglers coming across the border.”
Or that time in 2014 when two Dreamers confronted King over his years-long war on DACA, with King grabbing one by the arm—a Latina Dreamer—and telling her, “You’re very good at English:”
Since King has been so eager to take DACA away from more than half a million DREAMers, Erika Andiola of DRM Action confronted King in Iowa Monday night and asked him if he had the guts to personally take away hers.
Handing him her DACA card, Erika said, “I know you want to get rid of DACA. I want to give you the opportunity, if you really want to get rid of it, just rip mine. You can go ahead and do that.”
King refused, saying that he did not comment about personal cases. At one point in their discussion, King actually told Erika, “You’re very good at English,” to which she snapped back, “I was raised in the United States.”
And that time in 2016 when King, during a nationally televised interview on MSNBC, questioned the contributions of non-white people to civilization:
“I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where have these contributions been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about. Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
“Than white people?” host Chris Hayes asked.
“Than—than Western civilization itself, that’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the United States of America, and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world,” King said. “That’s all of Western civilization.”
Earlier this morning, King doubled down on his racist remarks about immigrants and their children from this past weekend, saying he "meant exactly what I said." Speaker Paul Ryan has yet to issue a single condemnation or take disciplinary action against King, which is not a complete shocker considering Ryan called Trump’s attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel last year the “textbook definition” of racism—and then voted for him anyway.
With Trump, Bannon, and Miller in control of Washington, maybe this is what the GOP is now.
