When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus of Nazareth if he was a king, little did he expect that a King would later liken his own suffering to that of Jesus.

U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, continued on Tuesday his ongoing efforts to prove his unfitness for office. Stripped of his committee assignments earlier this year after another in a long series of comments widely deemed racist in nature, King told constituents at a town hall meeting that prayer gave him a certain “peace” in facing rebukes from “400 and some accusers” among his congressional colleagues.

“We just passed through Easter and Christ’s Passion,” he said, “and I have a better insight into what he went through for us, partly because of that experience.”

Yes, he really said that. A man with a documented record of supporting people and causes affiliated with white supremacy, who keeps doing so for years after being criticized for it, cannot reasonably claim he is innocent of white supremacist sympathies.

To be sure, the media has overreacted to a few individual statements and actions of King. The New York Times, for example, apparently and quite absurdly thinks that making English the official language in Iowa is evidence of racism.

But, among his many lowlights, King has repeatedly promoted neo-Nazis on Twitter, trafficked in obviously bigoted tropes about Mexicans, and lamented that the term “white nationalism” is wrongly thought offensive. He is hardly an innocent sufferer of false accusations, much less a Christlike one. And, of course, suffering a series of largely true verbal criticisms hardly compares to being beaten, flayed, scourged, and crucified.

King isn’t even contrite, having insisted, repeatedly, that he has “nothing to apologize for.”

Even before King’s latest wildly inappropriate remarks, the two main papers serving his state and district had called on him to resign. The Sioux City Journal wrote that its resignation demand was a way to “reject, in all their reprehensible forms, inequality and intolerance.”

The Iowa newspapers are right. Steve King is no martyr. He’s a pathetic figure and an embarrassment to Congress. He should resign.