Des Moines, Iowa — Steve King, the former Republican Iowa congressman with a history of racist and controversial statements, reemerged on the political scene this week, campaigning with Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Wednesday.
Although King has not endorsed Ramaswamy officially, he did express his intention to caucus for the Ohio businessman — and the support has been welcomed by Ramaswamy with open arms, with King riding on Ramaswamy's campaign bus.
King, who served in Congress for 18 years, lost the GOP primary for his district in 2020 after defending the terms "white nationalism" and "white supremacy" in a 2019 interview with the New York Times which drew widespread bipartisan condemnation.
"White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?" King told the Times in the interview.
In the past, he has also used derogatory language about Mexican immigrants and supported far-right politicians in Europe. In a 2017 interview with CNN, he spoke openly about his desire for an America that is "just so homogenous that we look a lot the same," earning him praise from KKK leaders and neo-Nazi groups.
The pair have campaigned together often, speaking in opposition to the use of eminent domain to build carbon capture pipelines in Iowa, a stump issue for Ramaswamy as he continues his barnstorming of the state.
Ramaswamy said the eminent domain issue brought them together, but he also defended King when pressed by voters and reporters, calling him a "good man" who "deeply cares about this country."
Ramaswamy said King's comments have been "misunderstood and misportrayed" by the media.
When the connection garnered the attention of one Iowan voter on Tuesday who called King a white supremacist, Ramaswamy responded, "I don't think Steve King is a white supremacist. I don't think he's even close to that. I've gotten to know him only very recently in recent weeks."
He went on to say that "even if" King "had views on a different topic that I disagree with, but he agrees with me on the right topic here, of not using eminent domain to seize land that belongs to farmers who don't want a carbon dioxide capture pipeline across their land. I will always stand with somebody who says the right thing, no matter whether affiliation is even if they're from another party."
Ramaswamy's embrace of King underscores his tendency to lean into conspiracy theories and extreme views on the campaign trail, often echoing sentiments found in the Republican Party's far-right wing.
At the most recent GOP primary debate last week in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Ramaswamy plateaued several unfounded and false conspiracy theories on a national stage, claiming that the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was "an inside job" — an allegation that has been rebuked by the House select committee investigation and numerous prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants.
He also declared that the 2020 election was "stolen by big tech" — an allegation Ramaswamy has made repeatedly, despite no evidence to support it.
The Ohio Republican falsely alleged that the Democratic Party's platform is aligned with the unfounded "great replacement theory," a racist conspiracy theory which claims that White people in the U.S. are deliberately being "replaced" by nonwhite people. While the country is becoming more diverse, there is no evidence that the "great replacement theory" was ever a part of the Democratic Party's platform.
At a CNN town hall Wednesday, Ramaswamy doubled down on his Jan. 6 rhetoric, dodging fact-checks from the moderator. Ramaswamy also promoted a conspiracy theory involving Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who was the target of a 2020 kidnapping plot by a far-right paramilitary group. He claimed, without evidence, that the defendants had been encouraged to "do something they otherwise wouldn't have done," by government agents.
Shawna Mizelle is a 2024 campaign reporter for CBS News.
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