Updated March 13, 2017 at 2:08 p.m.
Steve King has always made a habit of speaking his mind, and quite frequently his mind has been controversial, blatantly false, or outright racist.
The Republican congressman from Iowa is the man who said in 2013 that while some children brought to the U.S. illegally were good kids, there were others “who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
That may have been his most famous moment, but it was hardly alone. He called Barack Obama “Kim Jong POTUS.” He disregarded abuses at Abu Ghraib prison as “hazing.” He argued, without any evidence, that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin had dangerous connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The litany could continue, but it won’t, because a quick Google search produces many lists of outrageous King comments. The trail goes back at least as far as 2003, when he first joined the House, and has been consistent ever since.
In July, King was on Chris Hayes’s MSNBC show, and he objected to the journalist Charlie Pierce’s emphasis on Donald Trump’s reliance on white support.
“This whole white-people business, though, does get a little tired, Charlie,” King said. “I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about. Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”