GOP/RACISM/STEVE KING/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “After years of turning a blind eye to Representative Steve King’s inflammatory statements and racist behavior, Republicans decided this week they had enough after Mr. King asked The New York Times when phrases like white supremacy and white nationalism had become offensive. But even as they piled on their condemnation, President Trump had used Twitter to mock Senator Elizabeth Warren for not announcing her presidential exploratory committee at Wounded Knee or Little Bighorn, sacred ground for Native Americans whose ancestors fought and died there. Now Mr. King — a Republican from Iowa who once said that undocumented immigrants had ‘calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert’ — is persona non grata in his party, even as Mr. Trump continues to paint the same migrants as rapists, drug dealers and importers of mayhem. On Wednesday [1-16-19], Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, weighed in, calling Mr. King’s comments ‘abhorrent.’ That disconnect has provided fodder for Democrats, who are eager to paint Republicans as hypocritical, and for Republicans in the never-Trump camp who see the president as an existential threat to the party.”
–Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “As Republicans Rush to Condemn Steve King, Some Ask: Why Not Trump?,” The New York Times online, January 16, 2019