White supremacist Rep. Steve King is fundraising off the fact that he’s gotten in trouble for being a white supremacist:
"The unhinged left has teamed up with Republican 'NeverTrumpers' and is pulling out all the stops to destroy me," King wrote in a campaign email to his supporters.
Yeah, buddy, that was House Republicans stripping you of committee assignments, and no, House Republican leadership is not made up of “NeverTrumpers.” And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said you should find “another line of work”? That guy is busy holding the line on Trump’s shutdown in the Senate.
“Since they were unable to defeat my campaign in the 2018 midterm elections, the rabid leftist media is blasting the airwaves in a pathetic attempt to paint me as a 'racist,’” the email continued. Hilarious, since his own comments have pathetically painted him as a racist time and time again. It goes on to try to tie King to Trump, saying “we have seen this playbook before … like when the media tried to defeat President Trump by calling him a racist.” There are similarities—it’s just that the email is trying to claim that both cases were false accusations, and where Trump defended violent racists in Charlotte, King openly asked “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?”
King may well raise a substantial amount of money off this appeal. After all, he’s probably second only to Trump as the favorite politician of white supremacists in the U.S. King is trying to have it both ways rhetorically, by insisting he’s not racist (as if) and appealing to the kind of racist who’s outraged that King’s racism would get him in trouble. But the email’s existence is also a recognition that he’s going to face a strong primary challenge without establishment support.