Steve King’s white supremacy comments send conservatives running

Other conservative activists and pundits followed Shapiro’s lead. On Twitter, gun rights activist Antonia Okafor apologized Thursday for “accepting [King’s] excuses” and “giving this man the benefit of the doubt.” Meanwhile, Lyman Stone, a contributor to The Federalist (and, full disclosure, a friend) who had previously criticized King while pushing back on the notion that he was sympathetic to white supremacy, walked back his previous comments as well: “My statement was that I wasn’t prepared to say he was a white supremacist without compelling evidence. We now have compelling evidence.”

Nor were the criticisms of King confined to the conservative commentariat. Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, tweeted that King’s comments were “abhorrent and racist and should have no place in our national discourse.” And Michigan Republican Justin Amash called it “an embrace of racism, and it has no place in Congress or anywhere.”