What's the Difference Between Steve King and Donald Trump?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/steve-king-and-donald-trump-share-same-beliefs/580288/

What’s the Difference Between Steve King and Donald Trump?
The congressman from Iowa has drawn rebukes from Republicans for his statements about white supremacy and white nationalism, but he shares many of his views with the president.
11:29 AM ET
Adam Serwer

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It was only after King’s latest remarks that Republicans condemned him with any kind of force. King drew a rebuke from Iowa’s two Republican senators, House Republicans have said they may take action against the congressman, and other high profile Republican legislators, such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, have condemned his remarks. The conservative intellectual Henry Olsen warned that the “seeds of bigotry” could take root in the Republican Party, and National Review called for King to be expelled from Congress, declaring that “one of the glories of American history is how we finally shed our shameful racist past.”

Hardly. While it is heartening to see that King’s antics have finally drawn a unified response of condemnation from the right, the reactions seem to miss the obvious point that there is little daylight between Steve King and the president of the United States, Donald Trump. (Neither National Review’s editorial nor Scott’s op-ed even mention the president’s name.)

But don’t take my word for it. In 2014, as Trump was mulling a run for president, he made an appearance in Iowa with King, calling him “special guy, a smart person, with really the right views on almost everything,” and noting that their views on the issues were so similar that “we don’t even have to compare notes.”

Little has changed. The president has defended white nationalists; sought to exploit the census to dilute the political power of minority voters, described immigration as an infestation, warning that it was “changing the culture of Europe;” derided black and Latino immigrants as coming from “shithole countries,” while expressing a preference for immigrants from places like “Norway;” and generally portrayed non-white immigrants as little more than rapists, drug dealers, and murderers at every opportunity.

Unlike King however, the president has the authority, by himself, to make his views into policy. From his travel ban to his child-separation policy to his revocation of protections for immigrants brought here as children, he has pursued discriminatory policies with a commitment he has shown for few other campaign promises. Even now, the federal government remains shut down, its workforce denied payment for their labor, all in pursuit of the construction of a taxpayer funded symbolic monument of disapproval towards immigrants of Latin American descent.

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It’s important that Republicans are taking racism more seriously. But that means not only rejecting backbencher congressmen like King. It means recognizing that King believes little that the man in the White House does not also believe. If the rejection of King is more than political opportunism, more than an attempt to portray the party as rejecting ideas that the president they support has embraced, then the Republican Party and the conservative movement will have to do more than censure King. They will have to reject Trumpism, and all it represents.