Steve King, the white supremacist former congressman from Iowa, endorsed longshot candidate Vivek Ramaswamy within the state’s Republican presidential main on Tuesday.
“Vivek Ramaswamy is going to shock the world at the Iowa caucus because he is the only candidate in this race who’s had the courage to oppose the CO2 pipelines here in Iowa, to publicly oppose the climate change cult, to commit to pardon peaceful Jan 6 protestors on day 1, and to end birthright citizenship for kids of illegals in this country,” King mentioned in an announcement obtained by Politico.
The Ramaswamy marketing campaign additionally produced a video of King making the endorsement, wherein he calls Ramaswamy the candidate who will “restore the pillars of American exceptionalism.”
King, a Republican, spent 18 years in Congress as a consultant for the conservative northwest nook of Iowa, incomes a repute as one of many furthest-right and most racist legislators in Washington. He misplaced his 2020 main race to a comparatively extra reasonable Republican, Rep. Randy Feenstra, after a collection of remarks he made condoning white supremacy.
Since he left workplace, King has overtly embraced well-known white supremacists, even talking on the 2022 American Renaissance convention in Tennessee, the annual gathering that has attracted a few of America’s most infamous racists and anti-Semites, together with Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer.
On Tuesday, Ramaswamy responded to King’s endorsement on X, previously Twitter, saying:
Most persons are sheep in the case of making endorsements, however @SteveKingIA doesn’t do what he’s “supposed to.” He votes his conscience and that’s why I respect him. Steve King was America First earlier than it was cool. The likes of Steve King & Pat Buchanan have been the OGs. He doesn’t again down from a combat and he definitely doesn’t bow to the Establishment. Grateful for his endorsement. Next up #shocktheworld on Jan. 15.
Ramaswamy, a former biotech entrepreneur, has repeatedly embraced fringe far-right figures and positions throughout his marketing campaign. He has touted the work of Richard Hanania, a racist far-right author uncovered by HuffPost as “Richard Hoste,” the pseudonymous writer of dozens of articles on white supremacist web site. Some of the articles Hanania wrote underneath the pen title advocated for the compelled sterilization and ethnic cleaning of non-white individuals.
Ramaswamy offered a blurb for Hanania’s e book, “The Origin of Woke,” printed by HarperCollins in September, calling him “unafraid to transcend the Overton Window on issues of race and gender” and saying that his e book amounted to “a devastating kill shot to the intellectual foundations of identity politics in America.”
And as famous by Politico, Ramaswamy has known as the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol an “inside job” and even used a televised debate look in December to push the “Great Replacement” conspiracy principle, which maintains that Democrats are importing immigrants into the U.S. to interchange white voters. Ramasamy known as the Great Replacement — which has motivated a number of white supremacist mass shootings — “not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”
King’s endorsement was as soon as extremely wanted in Iowa, with Republican presidential hopefuls courting the congressman each couple years. But King’s political capital slowly depleted after a collection of experiences detailed his intensive historical past of racist feedback and deep ties to white supremacists at residence and overseas.
In 2018, HuffPost reported that King had traveled to Austria, the place he did an interview with a far-right publication wherein he promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy principle. He additionally made headlines for repeatedly selling neo-Nazis on Twitter and for endorsing a white supremacist candidate for mayor of Toronto.
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King advised The New York Times in a 2019 interview about immigration. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”
Republican management within the House took the uncommon step of stripping King of his committee seats as punishment for the feedback, a transfer that helped precipitate his eventual main defeat a couple of months later.
King has not dialed down his extremism since leaving workplace. During his look on the 2022 American Renaissance convention, he was photographed with Jason Kessler, the white supremacist organizer of the lethal 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“Fantastic speech tonight at Amren by Congressman Steve King,” Kessler wrote on Twitter, posting a photograph of him and King smiling and giving thumbs up for the digital camera.
