U.S. Rep. Steve King has gotten slapped down hard by his fellow congressional Republicans, who have voted to strip him of all his committee assignments, essentially rendering the Iowa lawmaker a useless member of Congress.

That’s a good thing, yes? Yes, of course it is! King said he couldn’t understand why the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” have become offensive to Americans.

The House GOP caucus did the right thing.

But . . . wait a second! Another Republican politician has equated white supremacists and neo-Nazis with groups that demonstrated against them in Charlottesville, Va.; he said he didn’t anything about a widely known former Klan leader who had endorsed him for public office; he has continually refused to condemn in suitably stark language the actions and rhetoric that come from these groups.

The GOP congressional caucus has remained stone-cold silent about Donald John Trump!

It forces many Trump critics to question why the House Republican caucus that showed good sense in slapping down one of its members is so reluctant to do the same thing to the nation’s top Republican.

It could be argued that what the president said about the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville was worse than what King told The New York Times. Remember how Trump declared there was blame to go around for the violence “on both sides” and how there were “fine people on both sides” of the riot that left a counter-protester dead after one of the neo-Nazis ran over her with his motor vehicle?

Trump has derided the intelligence of some of his African-American critics. He referred to African nations as “sh**hole countries” and said we should encourage more immigration from places such as Norway.

The GOP congressional caucus has been silent. How come?