Someone let me know when Huckabee and his ilk decide to start calling the white supremacists who support Trump "terrorists."
Former Arkansas governor and Fox host Mike Huckabee made an appearance on this Saturday's Fox & Friends, and did his best to conflate peaceful protests, acts of civil disobedience and boycotts with people getting into physical altercations and making death threats in an attempt to paint all liberals as domestic terrorists who are supposedly acting out because they're a bunch of snowflakes that just can't accept that Trump is president.
In right-wing world, asking his daughter to leave a restaurant, boycotting advertisers on his network, or people making these Trump cabinet members miserable when they're out in public is now terrorism.
HENRY: As I see this play out, it all started with your daughter trying to go to a restaurant, have dinner, and you know, I see you smiling because, you know, at the time we thought oh, this is kind of silly, but sir, it's gotten quite serious since then.
HUCKABEE: Well, it actually started with the election. In a free society where people choose their government, the one thing that is required for that government to survive is that people have to accept the results of the election.
And what we have had since November of 2016 is that the losing side has not accepted the result. So what what they've done from day one, from the moment this has happened, they tried to not only delegitimize the election itself, but they tried to commit acts of terror.
And I use that word very intentionally because when you try change people's behavior, by intimidation, by threats of violence and by actual violence and by boycotting them and by taking away their liberty, that's terrorism.
And what we are see something a form of terrorism on the left that is unprecedented in American history.
Look, it's fine to disagree with election results. It's fine to hate the people that get elected. I say it's fine. It's really not. That doesn't necessarily destroy our country. This destroys our country.
HEGSETH: Governor is, there another ingredient to it too? You say delegitimize. How about dehumanize? This idea of wearing a MAGA hat, you must be a racist secretly. That there's code words and you are impugning the supporters. At some point that gives you license to confront in any way.
HUCKABEE: Well, it's very much a part of it. I mean, when you have anchors like Joe Scarborough saying that anyone who voted for and/or supported the president is a racist. That is a ridiculous statement on its face. He should have been fired for that. Certainly suspended and forced to apologize.
When you had the panelist say that anyone who supported, this is Donny Deutsch, who said if you supporter voted for Trump, you are a Nazi. My gosh, when you start going to that level, that extreme of attempting to, as you say and I agree, dehumanize the other side, things are truly spiraling out of control.
HUNTSMAN: Yeah, and governor, this is when leadership truly matters, right? To your point, that's when you need the folks at the top to step in and say we aren't going to stand for this. This goes well beyond the pale. But we are not seeing that happen. What is the answer? How do we get to a better place? Because my fear is this has just become the norm now and it's only going to get increasingly worse as the mid-terms heat up and then you have 2020, you're going to have how many more MAGA hats running around this country. How do we calm this down?
HUCKABEE: Abby, I wish I had a simple answer but a lot of it starts with the most important institution of government we'll ever have. The home. Mothers and fathers raising their children to respect other human beings as human beings teaching them to have some basic fundamental manners and courtesies.
Amd then it extends also all the way up to not only our political leadership but the people who are the uh... maybe the amplifiers of public opinion in the media. We all have responsibility.
But, to your point, I'm really concerned that there are a lot of people who have zero understanding of American history. They have no idea that we just observed the fourth of July and they have no idea what this country is about, how it started, what its fundamental principles are and how we save it.
If anyone needs a history lesson, it's Huckabee.
