What racist comments did Republican Steve King make?

Steven King, US politician and Representative from Iowa since 2003, has been creating headlines during Republican primaries over racist remarks he made in 2019. After the death of George Floyd caused protests across the country, and with the country in a very delicate state, King's comments proved to be too much for his bid to be re-elected during the primary.

In an interview with the New York Times in 2019, King asked: "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?"

King lost the primary in Iowa to Randy Feenstra, another Republican, after mainstream Republicans had turned their back on the long-time Representative following the incendiary remarks. King had been given a dressing-down over the comments and was stripped of his committee assignments.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, had told King "to find another line of work.”

King bemoaned the loss to Feenstra and said it was the result of "a single statement" he made during his career. "I called Randy Feenstra a little bit ago and conceded the race to him," King said in a video posted to Facebook early Wednesday morning. "And I pointed out that there's some powerful elements in the swamp that he's going to have an awfully hard time pushing back against them."

The Times report that King showed Trumpian rhetoric and thinking long before Trump came along and became president. He showed off a “12-foot border wall of his own design” to the House floor before Trump made that an important message in his presidential campaign.