Amid a House-wide freak out over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments about Israel—including a Washington Post op-ed comparing her to white nationalist Rep. Steve King—King seems determined to prove the absurdity of that comparison. According to HuffPost, the most racist man in Congress has again showed his true colors online, retweeting a post by Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy.
Goldy is an open white nationalist who King endorsed last year in her run for Toronto mayor. She has recited the “14 words,” a white supremacist slogan, and once recommended a book that called for the “elimination of Jews.” She also appeared on a podcast produced by the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, where she praised white supremacist Richard Spencer.
This is the third time King has promoted Goldy on Twitter.
King’s quote tweet of Goldy today was in service of smearing undocumented immigrants as criminals.
Goldy, in her tweet, condemned Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, for not challenging progressive pundit Van Jones during a panel at CPAC last week. At the panel, Jones claimed, accurately, that “undocumented immigrants right now have a lower crime rate than the rest of us.”
King’s claim that undocumented people make up about a fourth of the federal prison population is also probably true. But they are largely held in federal detention due to our country’s overzealous immigration enforcement, not because they committed any other crimes.
In January, King’s colleagues in the House finally began to take notice of his racist ways, after an interview with the New York Times in which King asked why terms like “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” were seen as offensive. King was subsequently removed from House committees and many GOP Congresspeople called on him to resign. But he didn’t—he’s still there, says he’s planning to run again in 2020 and, unlike Omar, not facing a resolution from his peers condemning him.
Since then, King has claimed that his quote was taken out of context, something the Times denies. But there’s no way for him to claim that his promotion of Goldy is out of context.
It’s best to see King’s continued promotion of Goldy what it is: support for someone who shares his views.