On this date, in both 2014, as well as in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day shared its first two profiles of Peter King, the sitting U.S. House Representative from New York’s 2nd Congressional District, a repeated fear-monger of practitioners of Islam in America, who has insisted that amongst American Muslims there is a “looming threat”, in a manner that makes the late Sen. Joe McCarthy give a thumbs up from beyond the grave. King is also one of the biggest defenders of the CIA torturing detainees at Guantanamo Bay Prison, and has tried defending it by lying and saying the intel that led to the United States locating and killing Osama bin Laden was acquired by waterboarding prisoners (it wasn’t). Rep. King contradicted the CIA’s torture report by saying, “no one was severely hurt” by the practices because no one was cut or stabbed. But the fact that Peter King is willing to fabricate stories to push his agenda should come as little surprise, when you consider he literally dismissed CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien for correcting him in an interview by yelling at her, “I DON’T CARE WHAT FACT-CHECK SAYS.” This also came into play in our second look at Congressman King, who blamed the death of Eric Garner not on police, but on Garner for being obese. What we’re getting at is he’s terrifyingly authoritarian, and will defend any action police or military experts make against someone just suspected of a crime.
Did Peter King overreact to threats of terrorism in predictably xenophobic or racist ways in the past year? Oh, you better believe it:
- September 11th, 2015: King votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015: Rep. King votes for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.
- November 19th, 2015: King co-sponsors and votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks.
- December 28th, 2015: Rep. King calls for 24/7 surveillance of all mosques in the United States, in the ultimate expression of what Islamophobia looks like.
- February 2nd, 2016: Peter King votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- May 14th, 2016: Rep. King is on Morning Joe criticizing the national security policies of Donald Trump, but that’s not the crazy part. The crazy part is that for whatever reason, while discussing the historical precedent, he refers to the Japanese as “Japs”. Over the next several days after using this racial slur, King refused to apologize.
Peter King is seeking his thirteenth term in Congress in the 2016 elections, facing off against Democrat DuWayne Gregory. New York’s 2nd District only has a +1 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, so this isn’t an impossible task, especially given Rep. King’s long history of bigotry. King has extended his political career by framing that bigotry, though, as a dedication by “being tough on crime and terrorism”. While from 2002-2010, that may have seemed credible… the act should have worn thin by now, even as he continues to go to that paranoid well. Hopefully, the good people of his district have begun to see through his theatrics.