Representative Steve King is an embarrassment to the Republican party. He has been for some time. On October 16, he endorsed white-nationalist Faith Goldy for mayor of Toronto. Goldy has plumped for a book that calls for the extermination of “the Jewish menace” and says that it’s “very, very, very, very spot on given a lot of what the movement is talking about right now.” In August 2017 Goldy was fired by Rebel Media for podcasting with the neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer. Enough to gain Steve King’s endorsement? You bet.



Faith Goldy, an excellent candidate for Toronto mayor, pro Rule of Law, pro Make Canada Safe Again, pro balanced budget, &...BEST of all, Pro Western Civilization and a fighter for our values. @FaithGoldy will not be silenced. https://t.co/uqkeaUjm7i — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) October 17, 2018



But while King’s endorsement is embarrassing, it’s also unsurprising. King and Goldy are both animated by the same brand of race-based identity-politics that consumes the alt-right. King’s focus on race and ethnicity is so consuming that it has become the core of his politics. In the past two weeks alone, he’s gone after Rep. Joaquin Castro and his brother Julian Castro, who served as an Housing and Urban Development Secretary under Obama by saying that they’re “retroactive Hispanics” who “took Spanish lessons to qualify.”

In June, King tweeted in support of Mark Collett, a British white-nationalist, to express their joint opposition to immigration. In favor of the far-right Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, King tweeted : “Wishing you a successful vote. Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.” King is so obsessed with the effects of immigration that he has sponsored bills to end birthright citizenship. King would like, he says, to have “an America that's just so homogenous that we look a lot the same.”

How extreme is he? “I do my best to pull President Trump to the right,” King tweeted on October 10.

Why King is taking sides in foreign elections in the first place remains a mystery. But the bigger mystery is why he still has a seat in Congress.