Former Iowa Rep. Steve King endorses Vivek Ramaswamy for president

Steve King, the nine-term former Republican representative from Iowa with a history of incendiary, racist rhetoric, endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy for president in his home state on Tuesday.

"Vivek Ramaswamy is going to shock the world at the Iowa caucus because he is the only candidate in this race who’s had the courage to oppose the CO2 pipelines here in Iowa, to publicly oppose the climate change cult, to commit to pardon peaceful Jan 6 protestors on day 1, and to end birthright citizenship for kids of illegals in this country," King said in a statement shared first with POLITICO.

The endorsement of the biotech entrepreneur, to be announced at Tanglewood Hills Pavilion in Bettendorf, came as Ramaswamy barnstorms the state. His campaign said he is the first candidate in presidential history to visit the state’s 99 counties twice in a single year.

“Most people are sheep when it comes to making endorsements, but Steve doesn’t do what he’s ‘supposed to.’ He votes his conscience and that’s why I respect him. Steve King was America First before it was cool. The likes of Steve King & Pat Buchanan were the OGs,” Ramaswamy said.

He added: “We’ve found common cause on countless issues where other Republicans are too afraid to speak up — opposing the CO2 Pipelines here in Iowa, ending birthright citizenship, making English the national language, or shutting down the deep state. I expect we’ll make Steve look prescient on Jan 15.”

King, who hails from the state’s most conservative pocket in Iowa’s northwest corner, lost his reelection bid in 2020 when he was defeated by then-state Sen. Randy Feenstra. Prior to then, he had alienated even many members of his own party for making outrageous statements, often on matters of race. He was stripped of his committee assignments before losing his re-election bid.

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King asked in a 2019 New York Times interview that drew widespread condemnation.

Ramaswamy, too, has dabbled at the fringes and skirted conspiracies, such as calling Jan. 6 an “inside job” and saying at the December debate that the so-called Great Replacement Theory, which holds that Democrats are making it possible for immigrants and minorities to supplant white voters, “is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”