White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders condemned Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King’s recent remarks on white supremacy but called on Democratic leaders to condemn malign views in their own caucus, she told reporters at the White House Wednesday.
“Steve King’s comments were abhorrent,” Sanders declared, adding, “the Republican leadership, unlike Democrats, have actually taken action when their members have said outrageous and inappropriate things.”
Sanders statement follows the House of Representatives’ rebuke of King’s remarks and his removal from committee assignments by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
King recently told The New York Times, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” (RELATED: Steve King Loses Committee Seats Over Remarks About ‘White Supremacy’)
The Iowa congressman claims that his statement is being taken out of context and that McCarthy is succumbing to public pressure rather than examining the facts.
My Statement on Kevin McCarthy’s Unprecedented Assault on my Freedom of Speech. pic.twitter.com/0R0vP6MoWT
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 15, 2019
Sanders’ reference to the Democratic caucus is likely a reference to several new Democratic members’ coziness with anti-Israel figures and anti-semites like Nation of Islam Minister Farrakhan. Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib recently posed for a photo with an anti-Israel activist who has equated Zionism with Nazism.
Several other members of the Democratic caucus have also associated with Farrakhan including Representative Maxine Waters.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who now leads the House Financial Services Committee, hugs racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan
Farrakhan has praised Hitler as being a “very great man,” has called Judaism a “gutter religion,” and compared Jews to “termites”
Do Dems disavow Waters? pic.twitter.com/WtjY1jAzYL
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 15, 2019