- For everyone who's a valedictorian,
there's another 100 out there that, they weigh 130 pounds
and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes
because they're hauling 75 pounds
of marijuana across the desert.
- [Nore Davis] That's Steve King,
like the famous horror author, but way scarier.
Born in 1949 in Storm Lake, Iowa,
King immediately started failing upwards.
After dropping out of Northwest Missouri State University,
King worked construction for a few years
before founding a construction company in 1975,
the same company he would end up plugging
when advocating for a border wall years later.
- Our little company could build a mile a day of that.
- [Narrator] In 1996, King ran for state Senate
on the idea of English-only America.
"It is time to speak the common voice.
"The argument that diversity is our strength
"has really never been backed up by logic," he said.
During a fundraiser, he won over the crowd.
"I believe English should be the official language
"of the state of Iowa."
The audience erupted,
and the anti-immigration movement was born.
Oh, Lord.
King coasted to an easy victory,
taking the Iowa state Senate seat with 64% of the vote.
In the Senate, King filed a bill
which required schools to teach that the United States
is the unchallenged greatest nation in the world,
and that it has derived its strength from Christianity,
free enterprise capitalism, and Western civilization.
King also served as chief sponsor of that bill,
seeking to establish English as the official language
of Iowa, which was signed into law.
In 2002, King was elected to the U.S. House
where he tried his anti-multiculturalism luck
on the larger scale.
In 2005, he introduced the English Language Unity Act,
a bill to make English the official language
of the entire country.
The bill failed to pass, but King introduced it
in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019.
Damn.
- I've given speeches at naturalization ceremonies.
I can notice if I tell a joke who laughs and who doesn't.
Those that don't understand English
don't laugh at those jokes,
but they're being sworn in as American citizens.
- [Nore Davis] Maybe King will stop introducing the bill
if he realizes he's just not that funny.
And if no one was going to laugh at his jokes,
he was going to at least try to block them
from entering his stand-up gigs altogether.
In 2006, King literally advocated
for electrocuting people trying to cross the border.
What?
- We can also electrify this wire
with the kind of current that wouldn't kill somebody
but it would simply be a discouragement for them
to be fooling around with it.
We do that with livestock all the time.
- [Narrator] Livestock management aside,
King has obviously been spewing racist rhetoric
long before Trump made headlines for doing the same.
In addition to those views, he's spoken on the record
in support of the right wing conspiracy theory
called The Great Replacement.
It's the idea that prominent elites
are working to replace white people with minorities.
- You will not replace us.
- [Narrator] King's bigoted platform
doesn't stop with kooky conspiracy theories.
In a 2010 House floor speech,
King advocated for racial profiling.
"If you can't profile someone,
"you can't use those common sense indicators
"that are before your very eyes."
Ha!
It turns out King's constituents
are into this sort of oratory,
because King has won re-election after re-election.
He knew what was working,
so he persistently doubled down on it.
In 2016, he introduced an amendment
that would block the treasury from replacing Andrew Jackson
with Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
Hm.
He said putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill
would be racist and sexist.
Oh, yeah?
Apparently replacing famous slave owner Andrew Jackson
with Tubman, a black woman born into slavery
who helped slaves navigate their way
to freedom, would be super racist.
Ain't that a bitch?
Also, in 2016, King claimed that nonwhite groups
haven't contributed to the society
as much as white people have.
Oh, yeah?
- Where are these contributions
that have been made by these other categories
of people that you're talking about?
Where did any other subgroup of people
contribute more to civilization?
- Than white people?
- Than Western civilization itself
that's rooted in western Europe, eastern Europe,
and the United States of America.
- [Narrator] The next year, white supremacists
claimed Steve as their own,
which suprisingly took longer than expected.
The Daily Stormer, a far-right neo-Nazi website,
said, "Steve King is basically
"an open white nationalist at this point.
"He is our guy."
- Is Steve conservative enough, folks?
- [Narrator] And he wouldn't soon let his fanbase down.
Why not?
Fast-forward to 2018, King endorsed a white supremacist
in the Toronto mayoral race who believes
Nazis have robust and well thought out ideas.
Oh, God.
And just months before his re-election
to a ninth term in Congress,
King met with members of a far-right Austrian party
with historical Nazi ties during a European trip
financed by a Holocaust memorial group.
The (beep)?
In 2019, King rhetorically asked The New York Times,
"White nationalist, white supremist, Western civilization,
"how did that language become offensive?"
To reprimand King for his comments in the Times,
he was removed from his House committee assignments.
An array of prominent Republicans
like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Steve Stivers,
and Kevin McCarthy have denounced him.
Yay.
The most surprising was Mitch McConnell,
who said, "If he doesn't understand
"why white supremacy is offensive,
"he should find another line of work."
There is one prominent Republican and former steak salesman
who hasn't yet denounced him, though.
- He doesn't get a fair press.
He doesn't get it.
It's just not fair.
I'm here, and very strongly here,
because I have great respect for Steve King.
- [Narrator] Because several of Trump's talking points
have come straight from King, if he were to ever condemn him
Trump would, in turn, be condemning himself.
In August of 2019, King perhaps made
his most controversial claim yet.
While defending his anti-choice bill,
which doesn't have exemptions for rape and incest,
King said, if not for rape and incest,
there may not be a population.
What?
- And what if we went back through all the family trees
and just pulled those people out
that were products of rape and incest,
would there be any population
in the world left if we did that?
- [Narrator] King said although he's been stripped
of his committee assignments, he'll be back.
And until the President formally condemns him,
King could be right.
Oh, good Lord.
After all, he's up for re-election in 2020,
looking to secure his 10th term
to the House of Representatives.
(light music)