Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee did not mince words when talking about the Iran deal in an interview with Breitbart News, calling it “idiotic” and using a Holocaust reference to describe the agreement. In an escalation of the anti-deal rhetoric to unprecedented levels, Huckabee said the agreement “will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”
Surely it was taken out of context, right? A presidential candidate wouldn’t actually compare a nuclear agreement with the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, who cremated bodies in ovens, right? Here’s Huckabee, from Breitbart:
This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people. I read the whole deal. We gave away the whole store. It’s got to be stopped.
CNN asked Huckabee’s campaign spokeswoman to elaborate on the remark, but she refused. “The comment speaks for itself,” she said.
Outrage came quickly, and Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz called on Huckabee to “apologize to the Jewish community and to the American people for this grossly irresponsible statement.” The National Jewish Democratic Council, meanwhile, called on other Republican presidential candidates to denounce Huckabee’s remarks. “Far, far too often, this organization has found itself forced to denounce politicians for invoking the Holocaust in inappropriate and offensive ways,” the NJDC said in a statement. “These comments by Gov. Mike Huckabee, however, may be the most inexcusable we’ve encountered in recent memory.”
