Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa is pretty confident that he won't be punished for making white nationalist remarks.
After King tweeted on Sunday, "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies" and told CNN on Monday, "We have an element of Americans here, and that’s a big element, that rejects Western civilization," many Democrats have called for the congressman to lose his committee posts as punishment.
"That’s a ridiculous proposition," King told Politico. "Nancy Pelosi doesn’t run that," he said about the House minority leader.
King also told Politico that he wasn't sure if his tweet, sent in support of Dutch politician Geert Wilders in his ultimately unsuccessful bid to become that country's prime minister, had contributed to the far-right-winger's defeat.
"I hope that it was helpful. I don’t know how it played in the Netherlands," King told Politico, adding that Wilders' strong showing "encouraged" him because the Netherlands is "the most liberal country in Western Europe."
Although House Speaker Paul Ryan has expressed disagreement with King's remarks and White House press secretary Sean Spicer has commented that "this is not a point of view that he shares," they and other powerful Republicans have not moved to punish King for uttering them.
"The American people will not accept the silence of the majority party when one of their own speaks this way," Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said on the House floor in response to King's comments. "I’m waiting for the denunciations, the censure, the rebukes, but I expect I’ll be waiting a long time."
Shares