When Iowa congressman Steve King was punished by the Republicans for defending the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist”—”how did that language become offensive?” he asked rhetorically in a New York Times interview—he promised his constituents that he’d be back in a big way, and that Republicans would regret stripping him of his committee assignments and effectively neutering him politically. “There’s a 70% chance [the Democrats will] attempt an impeachment of Donald Trump,” King told a crowd in his home district in January, just over a week after he was condemned on the House floor for his remarks. “And they need seasoned members to give them an opportunity to defend themselves and defend them.”
Several months later not only has King not been invited back onto those committees, he continues to be shunned by GOP leadership, and very deliberately so. He requested permission from the White House to fly with Trump on Air Force One to Iowa on Tuesday, as the president made a campaign stop in his home state. The administration turned down his request, according to CNN, forcing him to schlep to the state on a commercial flight. (Two other congressional Republicans were invited to fly with the president: Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who initially said she would be unable to make the flight due to her voting schedule.)
The snub is the new normal for King, who since being formally wrist-slapped by the House has been confined to the Republican “pariah caucus,” which includes Rep. Duncan Hunter, charged with misusing campaign funds, and Rep. Chris Collins, who was indicted for insider trading. (Both Hunter and Collins have pleaded not guilty.) Yet King has kept up a stream of complaints, claiming he was unfairly targeted by the left, and refusing to apologize for his remarks. If anything, he’s doubled down on his longstanding insistence on Western supremacy. “If we presume that every culture is equal and has an equal amount to contribute to our civilization, then we’re devaluing the contributions of the people that laid the foundation for America, and that’s our Founding Fathers,” King said just last month, according to the Des Moines Register, as he campaigned against a Republican governor-sanctioned primary challenger for his seat. “It is not about race, it’s never been about race. It is about culture.”
His defensiveness has not played well. King plotted a comeback earlier this month by asking a small group of allies to lobby for his reinstatement in a Republican conference meeting, only to be shot down by the rest of the party when the subject was broached. (Sources in the room told Politico that “not a single lawmaker clapped, cheered, or remarked on the request…and lawmakers quickly moved on to the next issue.”) And his reputation among conservative media, an equally powerful party arm, is reportedly wearing thin. When King proposed the Diamond and Silk Act, a bill named after a pair of YouTube political commentators and aimed at rerouting funds from sanctuary cities to homeless and veteran services, he was roundly panned for the publicity grab. “Either (1) he thinks he can rehabilitate himself, or (2) his legislative exile has melted his higher mental functions,” quipped the Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes.
That even Donald Trump, the most outspoken member of the Republican Party, opted not to acknowledge King’s existence may be the nail in the Iowa rep.’s coffin. Trump “is thanking a host of Iowa Republicans here in Des Moines, from the governor down to state legislators and county party chairs,” the *Daily Mail’*s David Martosko tweeted on Tuesday night at an event packed with more than 700 Republicans. “Everybody but the dogcatcher -- but not Rep. Steve King, who is here in the audience.”
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