On Tuesday, CNN reported that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) was not allowed to fly with President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One as the president campaigns in his home state.
Two other Republicans, Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Deb Fischer (R-NE), joined the president for the trip. But King's request to travel with Trump was reportedly rejected by administration officials.
King has become an increasing liability for the Republican Party as his colleagues have had to deal with his increasingly open white nationalist sympathies, from calling young Mexicans drug mules, to claiming that society cannot be rebuilt with "somebody else's babies," to meeting with a far-right Austrian party founded by a Nazi officer on a Holocaust education trip, to lamenting that "white supremacy" has become a bad word.
Republicans tolerated King's behavior for years, even putting him in charge of a civil rights subcommittee in the House. But they finally disavowed him earlier this year, stripping him of his committee assignments.
Iowa is a crucial state for President Donald Trump to win. He carried it by 9 points in 2016, but the state has swung sharply against him as the effects of his trade war have devastated farming communities. Former Vice President Joe Biden is holding a rally at the same time as the president, hoping to reassemble President Barack Obama's electoral map in the event that he becomes the Democratic nominee.