Steve King Has a Friend in Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert

When Iowa Congressman Steve King wondered out loud last week to the New York Times, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”, the backlash was swift. After years of sheltering the openly racist, bigoted, xenophobic ethno-nationalist, the GOP appeared ready to finally throw him under the bus.

“This is not the first time we’ve heard these comments,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “That is not the party of Lincoln and it’s definitely not American.” King has endorsed white nationalist groups and candidates, appeared on the podcast of neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer and declared that “diversity is not our strength.” The eight-term congressman previously bemoaned that “white nationalist” is a derogatory term used to smear white people as racists.

Not everybody was eager to condemn King. It was Louie Gohmert, a fellow right-wing conservative congressman from deep East Texas, who yielded a portion of his time on the House floor to allow King to explain himself, claiming that the Times took his comments out of context. King was stripped of his committee assignments earlier this week by GOP House leadership.

At a meeting earlier this week between McCarthy and a group of House Republicans, Gohmert was reportedly the only one to defend King. And he’s not backing down. “[King] was talking about Western civilization, that, ‘When did Western civilization become a negative?’ and that’s a fair question. When did Western civilization become a negative?” Gohmert said in an interview with his hometown paper, the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/steve-king-has-a-friend-in-texas-congressman-louie-gohmert/