Former Arkansas Republican governor Mike Huckabee, father of press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is catching some heat for a problematic tweet he shared on Saturday while taking a jab at Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi.
The tweet includes a photo of five Hispanic men using MS-13 gang signs captioned, “Nancy Pelosi introduces her campaign committee for the take back of the House." Huckabee, as you can see in the tweet below, has yet to master the art of subtweeting or using an @ sign.
Huckabee likely attacked Pelosi because of her opposition to Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, and cites conspiracy theories linking Democrats to MS-13, as CNN points out. Back in May, Trump claimed that Pelosi supported MS-13, which PolitiFact later proved false.
The tweet also serves to further criminalize and dehumanize immigrants, prompting people to fire back at Huckabee.
"MS-13 is not a race but an illegal gang who rapes, murders, and mutilates children as sport. Nancy Pelosi defended them because she said @realDonaldTrump insulted them," Huckabee tweeted at Washington Post political columnist Karen Tumulty, defending his comments.
However, Huckabee does understand "bigotry" when it affects his own family. He rushed to defend his daughter after she was booted from a restaurant in Virginia on Saturday. What a busy day for the Huckabee family.