After initially staying mum on Congressman Steve King’s recent tweets quoting the increasingly autocratic prime minister of Hungary and arguing that “assimilation, not diversity, is our American strength,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds Tuesday morning shrugged them off as part of “the Twitter war.”
Gov. Reynolds says she'll keep Steve King on as a co-chair. "I'm not going to get involved in the Twitter war." #iapolitics
— Brianne Pfannenstiel (@brianneDMR) December 12, 2017
“I completely disagree with what he said,” Reynolds also told reporters, but qualified her criticism by adding, “I have a lot of co-chairs that have signed up to support our campaign” and “I’m not going to agree with everything they have to say.”
.@KimReynoldsIA on @SteveKingIA's "diversity" tweet and his status as her campaign co-chair:
"I completely disagree with what he said. I have a lot of co-chairs that have signed up to support our campaign. … I'm not going to agree with everything they have to say." #iapolitics— Brianne Pfannenstiel (@brianneDMR) December 12, 2017
And, reacting to calls for the governor to boot King as a co-chair of her gubernatorial re-election campaign over his controversial remarks and views (which recently also included his retweet of an account for a white supremacist website whose founder has supported the views of Adolf Hitler), Reynolds said she wouldn’t.
“I strongly,strongly disagree” @KimReynoldsIA says of @SteveKingIA “Diversity is not our strength” tweet. But will keep him on her statewide leadership team for re-election. pic.twitter.com/GsV6xiidOR
— Dave Price (@idaveprice) December 12, 2017
When Reynolds announced that King had joined her campaign team, she called him “independent, principled,” and a “strong defender of freedom and our conservative values.”
