Mike Huckabee: Donald Trump Isn't Racist, Just 'A Plain-Spoken Guy'

By Anna Merlan  |  July 14, 2015 | 4:50pm
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In an already-forgotten ad aired earlier this year, Mike Huckabee’s America Takes Action group said illegal immigration leads to a “bad element” coming into the country, including “drug runners, terrorists and human traffickers”—all of this according to a rancher in the ad, who acts as a Huckabee mouthpiece.

So it’s perhaps not surprising that Huckabee is willing to defend rancid puddle of palm oil Donald Trump’s now-infamous remarks that Mexicans crossing the border into the United States are “rapists” and “criminals.” BuzzFeed reported Monday night that, on conservative radio show American Heartland with Dr. Grace, Huckabee said the Republican party should “be welcome” to hear Trump’s views, adding:

But I don’t think that Donald Trump is a racist and I think that anybody who will say that has never been around him. He’s a plain spoken guy, but I think that if you disagree with somebody, calling them a racist is sort of a way to end a legitimate and thoughtful discussion and that’s unfortunate. Republicans have room in our party for Donald Trump and we should be welcome to hear his views, and if you disagree with him, well we’ll disagree with him.

But, of course, Huckabee might not disagree at all. In his “Feed, Fuel, Fight” ad earlier this year, Huckabee’s camp found rancher Lloyd Huggins, who said a bunch of things about how illegal immigrants are unskilled terrorists:

Here’s a transcript of that part:

Lloyd Huggins: “We need a certain level of legal immigration in this country. Our problem is illegal immigration. You don’t just open the borders and let anybody in that wants in, because you get a bad element that comes with it. You get the drug runners, the terrorists, the human traffickers.
That’s not a good thing. There’s also the problem of we sort of allow people in with no skills, no ability to make a living, and they fall into that trap of depending on government support.
Gov. Mike Huckabee: “We’ve got to repeal Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders, oppose amnesty, and secure the border. You don’t punish people for living by the rules. If you’re rewarding people who play outside the rules, and punish people who live within the rules, pretty soon nobody is going to play by the rules. By securing the border and protecting American workers and their livelihoods, we’ll finally help every American earn his or her maximum wage.”

The funny thing about all of this, as Raw Story points out, is that Dr. Grace host Grace Vuoto is the founder of the Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal, which tries to sell conservative politics to minority voters. Literally, that’s their mission statement: “A non-partisan, education and outreach organization which aspires to engage and mobilize the millions of African Americans, Hispanics, women and other minorities in this country who share conservative values.”

So, yeah. This is it. This is the conservative outreach to minority voters. Going great.

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Image via AP.

 
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