Rep. Steve King responded Thursday to White House hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand telling him to resign from Congress by casting doubt on her struggling 2020 presidential campaign.
“Odds of my resigning are the same as yours of winning the nomination for POTUS: ZERO,” Mr. King, Iowa Republican, said on Twitter to Ms. Gillibrand, New York Democrat.
Ms. Gillibrand had called out the congressman on Twitter hours earlier in response to his controversial comments this week about rape and incest.
“What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled out anyone who was a product of rape or incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” Mr. King said during an event Wednesday.
“You are a disgrace. Resign,” Ms. Gillibrand tweeted to Mr. King afterward.
Ms. Gillibrand’s campaign did not immediately respond to a message seeking its reaction to the congressman’s retort.
A former congresswoman elected to the Senate in 2008, Ms. Gillibrand is among the crowded pool of more than 20 candidates currently seeking the Democratic nomination to compete against President Trump in 2020. Several recent surveys have placed her polling at less than one percent among likely voters compared to fellow candidates.
Democrats and Republicans alike have called for Mr. King to resign in light of his latest comments, including several other 2020 presidential hopefuls and Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican and the GOP’s third-ranking member of the House of Representatives.
“As I’ve said before, it’s time for him to go. The people of Iowa’s 4th congressional district deserve better,” tweeted Ms. Cheney, the chair of the House Republican Caucus.
Calls for Mr. King’s resignation previously erupted in January after he asked during an interview, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” He was ultimately stripped of his committee assignments but remained in Congress.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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