Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King is facing heat after someone managing his campaign’s Facebook page posted a meme on Sunday criticizing a Parkland student for donning a patch of the Cuban flag.
“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense,” the meme said alongside an image of Cuban-American Emma Gonazlez, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, speaking at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington on Saturday.
In the comments section, someone managing King’s Facebook page sparred with Brandon Wolf, one of the survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
“When it was my community, where were you?” Wolf asked. “When it was Sandy Hook? Columbine? Were you on the sideline mocking those communities too? Did you question someone identifying as a mother? Did you question whether people like me were crisis actors?”
Wolf added: “Emma stood for 6 mins and 20 seconds to honor the lives of 17 gone too soon. The least you could do is shut your privileged, ineffective trap for 6 seconds to hear someone else’s perspective.”
The person managing King’s page responded: “Pointing out the irony of someone wearing the flag of a communist country while simultaneously calling for gun control isn’t ‘picking’ on anyone. It’s calling attention to the truth, but we understand that lefties find that offensive.”
As of Monday morning, the post is still up.
King’s congressional office has not responded to CNN’s request for comment, but told The Washington Post that the campaign team was responsible for the meme.
The campaign did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.