How in the world did this man get elected? Iowa?

Rep. Steve King believes the U.S. should be like his congressional district - 96 percent white.

HOW IN THE WORLD did this man get elected? Iowa? Please!

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who has a history of controversial statements on immigration and race, is drawing a lot of flak for a Sunday tweet in support of a right-wing Dutch politician, in which King wrote, "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."

To be perfectly clear, he's talking about white civilization and Asian babies, Latino babies, African babies. That's out and out racist!

In the tweet, King praised right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders who recently vowed to “de-Islamise” the Netherlands, proposed that mosques be shut down and said that the Koran should be banned.

In case you didn't get his message, which he said wasn't about race, he doubled down on his tweet Monday in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. King defended his tweet, saying he “meant exactly what I said” and adding that he would “like to see an America that’s just so homogeneous that we look a lot the same.”

Republicans tried to distance themselves from King's statements.  Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said, "We are a nation of immigrants, and diversity is the strength of any nation and any community."

Conservative commentator Bill Kristol tweeted: "Is it worth making the obvious point that what American history has been about is 'restoring' ourselves with 'somebody else's babies?' "

He did get some support ... from David Duke of the KKK.

King is used to the heat generated by his tweet. In the past, he has made racially charged comments without any backtracking or apology.

Last summer, during the Republican National Convention King was on a panel moderated MSNBC host Chris Hayes discussing the homogeneity of the conventioneers. This irked King making him say: 

"I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"

"Than white people?" asked Hayes, who couldn't believe what he just heard.

"Than, than Western civilization itself," King replied. "It's rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That's all of Western civilization."

Panelist April Ryan, who is black, quickly objected, "What about Asia? What about Africa?"

All Americans should be offended by King's views. King is merely the easiest to criticize because of his elected post. Too many others who hold similar opinions have come out of the woodwork since Donald Trump began his campaign for the presidency by denouncing Mexicans as rapists and drug smugglers.

We should not allow Trump's views to become normalized by giving him a pass simply because he is the president. Everyone with a public platform, celebrities - policiticians, clergy - should denounce people like King and Trump, whose election victory opened up a Pandora's box of hate and ignorance.