IV 

116TH CONGRESS 

2D SESSION H. RES. 789 

Raising a question of the privileges of the House. 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

JANUARY 10, 2020 

Mr. KING of Iowa submitted the following resolution; which was referred to 

the Committee on House Administration 

RESOLUTION 

Raising a question of the privileges of the House. 

Whereas in a quote attributed to him by the New York 

Times, Congressman King is alleged to have wondered 

when the phrases ‘‘White nationalist, white supremacist, 

Western Civilization’’ became offensive, suggesting to 

some that he does not view the first two terms as pejorative; 

Whereas Congressman King has consistently disputed this interpretation, maintaining that he was simply trying to 

ask when the phrase ‘‘Western Civilization’’ had gained 

a pejorative connotation, an assertion that is supported 

by the remaining section of the Times quote; 

Whereas Congressman King says the conversation in which 

this quote is alleged to happen was about the left’s use 

of weaponized language: ‘‘we discussed the changing use 


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of language in political discourse. We discussed the worn 

out label ‘racist’ and my observation that other slanderous labels have been increasingly assigned to Conservatives by the Left, who injected into our current political 

dialog such terms as Nazi, Fascist, ‘White Nationalist, 

White Supremacist,—Western Civilization, how did 

THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our 

civilization?’ . . . just to watch Western Civilization become a derogatory term in political discourse today.’’; 

Whereas notably, none of the context of the discussion which 

spawned the ‘‘quote’’ was included in the New York 

Times story. This context would have added greater clarity to King’s reported remarks, revealing that his intention was to question the inclusion of ‘‘WESTERN CIVILIZATION’’ alone as a pejorative; 

Whereas no tape of the interview with the New York Times 

exists and the paper refuses to release the reporter’s 

notes of the conversation; 

Whereas the question that Congressman King is purported to 

have been responding to has not been disclosed and neither the New York Times nor the reporter has answered 

whether the question posed included the two odious 

ideologies that were then alleged in the response, logically 

leading the Congressman to repeat back the ideologies as 

they had been first posed by the reporter; 

Whereas the structure of the purported quote contextually 

only makes sense if the reporter did in fact refer to those 

odious ideologies in the question posed, in so doing leading Congressman King to repeat them back as he pondered the question that was asked of him; 


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Whereas the content of the Times ‘‘quote’’ makes it clear 

that King was ONLY talking about ‘‘Western Civilization’’. The ‘‘quote’’: ‘‘White Nationalist, white Supremacist, Western civilization—how did THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me 

about the merits of our history and our civilization?’’; 

Whereas NOBODY IN AMERICA EVER SAT IN A CLASS 

about the merits of White nationalism or White 

supremacism. The incorrect interpretation that has been 

given to this ‘‘quote’’ refutes itself based on the ‘‘quoted’’ 

sentence’s own construction; 

Whereas, on January 18th, 2019, Mark Steyn was quoted as 

saying ‘‘He made a mistake, Steve King. He agreed to 

give an interview on national immigration policy to the 

New York Times. That’s not a good faith interview request. They’re only asking you, and he should know this, 

they’re only asking you to stitch you up. To talk to you 

for three hours and get you to use one phrase in there 

that they can lift out and kill you with . . . This guy, 

Steve King, was trapped, trapped! The words he said 

about ‘when did that become controversial’, he meant the 

phrase ‘Western Civilization’. He’s not a white supremacist. He’s not a white nationalist. It’s all stupid talk. So 

you’ve just surrendered the phrase ‘Western Civilization’. 

I don’t get that. I don’t see what’s in it for conservatism 

in surrendering that phrase, in accepting the leftist’s view 

that the term ‘Western Civilization’ is beyond the pale.’’; 

Whereas contemporaneous evidence supports King’s version 

of the story: In a Christian Science Monitor (CSM) article published on January 15, 2019 (5 days after the 

Times story broke), King is quoted making a similar argument: ‘‘In a conversation with the Monitor just before 


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the holidays, King defended himself against accusations 

of racism. The left, he says, has weaponized terms like 

‘racist’, ‘Nazi’ and ‘white nationalist’ using them against 

anyone who dares to defend American values or the Constitution. ‘There are people that don’t like America the 

way it is’, he says, ‘and there are people that don’t like 

America when she was at her best. They want to tear 

down the systems we have. I don’t believe that. I think 

our Founding Fathers got it right.’.’’; 

Whereas this CSM interview occurred prior to the release of 

the Times article, and shows how King had been making 

a variation of this argument at the approximate time he 

spoke to the Times reporter. In this case, though, the 

CSM actually published it in the context in which it was 

made. It is clear that King was making a similar argument to the Times; 

Whereas the quote in the CSM is the FIRST DOCUMENTED INSTANCE of Steve King ever using the 

phrase ‘‘white nationalist’’. This is an important point, 

because King has asserted ‘‘That ideology never shows up 

in my head. I don’t know how it could possibly come out 

of my mouth.’’. A Lexis-Nexis search dating back to 

2000 shows King has never used any of the following 

phrases: ‘‘white nationalism’’, ‘‘white nationalist’’, ‘‘white 

supremacist’’, or ‘‘white supremacy’’. In the same time 

frame, King is quoted 276 times using the term ‘‘Western Civilization’’; 

Whereas based on this data, it appears unlikely that King 

spontaneously used the phrases ‘‘white nationalist’’ and 

‘‘white supremacist’’ in his discussion with the Times reporter, as they were never common elements of his 


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speech. It suggests that King was repeating terms fed to 

him by the Times; 

Whereas the contention that King reacted to the Times reporter’s use of the phrases ‘‘white nationalist’’, ‘‘white 

supremacist’’, and ‘‘western civilization’’ as pejoratives is 

supported by the body of the Times article itself; 

Whereas the article contains the following passage, likely 

written prior to the King interview: ‘‘Elected to Congress 

in 2002, Mr. King attracted the attention of hate-watch 

groups like the Anti-Defamation League as he spoke increasingly about preserving ‘Western Culture’ or ‘Western Civilization’. The groups consider those buzzwords 

that signal support to white nationalists, along with an 

obsession with birthrates and abortion rates among different ethnic groups.’’ Doesn’t it make more sense that 

the reporter asked a question in which ‘‘Western Civilization’’ was linked with the offensive epithets, and King responded by wondering how it came to be that the meritorious phrase ‘‘Western Civilization’’ became a similar 

pejorative? Certainly, the answer he is alleged to have 

given fits with this belief; 

Whereas the point King was attempting to make about the 

left’s use of labels to smear conservatives, labels which 

now include even the concept of ‘‘Western Civilization’’ 

itself, is supported by Lexis-Nexis data. Beginning in 

2016 there has been an explosive increase in the use of 

the labels ‘‘White Supremacist’’, ‘‘White Supremacy’’, 

‘‘White Nationalist’’, and ‘‘White Nationalism’’. This 

squares closely with what Congressman King told Dave 

Price of WHO–TV regarding the phrase ‘‘White Nationalist’’: ‘‘It is a derogatory term today. I wouldn’t have 

thought so maybe a year or two or three ago. Today they 


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use it as a derogatory term, and it implies that you are 

a racist.’’; 

Whereas in his statement, King was trying to put into words 

his entirely accurate observation that the term ‘‘white nationalist’’ has been weaponized by the left against conservatives, and that its use in this form has markedly increased over the past several years; 

Whereas King’s point about the increased frequency with 

which the weaponized term ‘‘white nationalist’’ has been 

injected into modern political dialogue is evident when 

data from a Lexis-Nexis News Database search is analyzed and we learn that White nationalist was virtually 

an unused term prior to 2016, and quickly surged to 

31,057 usages in the year 2017; 

Whereas as King told Price, it has only been in the last ‘‘year 

or two or three’’ that the pejorative phrase ‘‘white nationalist’’ has gained purchase in the political debate as a 

weaponized term; 

Whereas a follow up New York Times story about Steve King 

entitled ‘‘A Timeline of Steve King’s Racist Remarks and 

Divisive Actions’’ was criticized by legendary journalist 

Brit Hume as being ‘‘completely bogus’’. This ‘‘completely bogus’’ story was written the next day by the 

same writer, in the same paper, on the same general 

topic, and could possibly be revealing of a bias regarding 

Congressman King; 

Whereas the Congressional Record made the exact same error 

as the New York Times in transcribing King’s January 

15, 2019, floor statement, when the transcriptionist left 

out a break between the words ‘‘white supremacist’’ and 

‘‘western civilization’’. Video shows King intentionally inVerDate Sep 11 2014 20:18 Jan 13, 2020 Jkt 099200 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR789.IH HR789

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serting a break between those words, but the transcript 

does not reflect this; 

Whereas no one believes the Congressional Record was acting 

with animus. But their error did reveal how either a similar error, or an intentional misplacement of punctuation, 

could have led to a botched quote in the Times. Remember, King has always disputed the quote as it was portrayed in the Times; 

Whereas King is insisting upon a correction in the Congressional Record so that it reflects the quote as he intentionally delivered it on the House floor. King’s correction 

reveals that he was attempting to separate ‘‘Western Civilization’’ from the other two pejorative terms; 

Whereas this is the New York Times/Congressional Record’s 

mistaken quote: ‘‘White Nationalist, White Supremacist, 

Western Civilization—how did THAT language become 

offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the 

merits of our history and our civilization?’’; 

Whereas this is the corrected quote: ‘‘White Nationalist, 

White Supremacist,—Western Civilization, how did 

THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our 

civilization?’’; 

Whereas one misplaced hyphen in the New York Times story 

gave birth to a meritless controversy, by falsely implying 

that Congressman King did not differentiate between the 

three phrases; 

Whereas Congressman King was railroaded over a false 

quote. To believe the version of events relied upon by 

Kevin McCarthy to strip King of committee assignments, 

one must believe that an unreasonable but ‘‘sensational’’ 


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interpretation, for which no evidence exists, is more likely 

to be accurate than a reasonable, ‘‘noncontroversial’’ interpretation which is internally supported by context 

clues and externally supported by data and other contemporaneous, published accounts. One must also believe 

that the New York Times, a hostile, liberal paper which 

has had other articles about Congressman Steve King 

written by the same author thoroughly debunked as 

‘‘completely bogus’’, set aside its animus in this particular case; 

Whereas clause 1 of rule IX defines questions of privileges of 

the House as ‘‘those affecting the rights of the House 

collectively, its safety, dignity, and the integrity of its 

proceedings.’’. Subjects giving rise to questions of the 

privileges of the House include the integrity of the Journal, the protection of House records and files, and the accuracy of House documents and records; and 

Whereas the mistaken quote, as also mistakenly recorded in 

the Congressional Record, reflects directly on both the 

House’s dignity and integrity: Now, therefore, be it 

1 Resolved, That the Clerk of the House of Representa2 tives shall correct the Congressional Record from January 

3 15, 2019, online and in print, to reflect what was origi4 nally stated and then reiterated on the House floor: 

5 ‘‘White Nationalist, White Supremacist,—Western Civili6 zation, how did THAT language become offensive? Why 

7 did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our 

8 history and our civilization?’’. 

Æ 


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