Steve King Shares Meme About a New Civil War

Congressman Steve King has been lobbying to have his House committeeships restored after he was stripped of them over incendiary comments, notes Roll Call. This won't help. The Iowa conservative posted a jokey meme about a modern civil war. King has since deleted the post, but you can see it at various sites, including the Hill. It reads: “Folks keep talking about another civil war; one side has about 8 trillion bullets while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use." King then added his own line, "Wonder who would win," accompanied by a smirking emoji. The image shows two robot-like figures fighting, one blue, one red, each made up of states based on their political leanings.

Both Roll Call and the Washington Post note that King apparently didn't realize that his own state, Iowa, is in blue, not the side he would pick in that fight. King has not commented about the image or his decision to delete, but he took lots of flak almost immediately. King "isn't actually COMMITTING treason, but he is fomenting and inciting it," tweeted Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. "Ample reason to expel him" from the House. King lost his committeeships over a quote to the New York Times—he insists he was misrepresented—in which he said, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?" (More Steve King stories.)