Mike Huckabee: Joe Biden is 'not an option' for 2020 religious voters
'The Democratic Party has been slowly moving further and further to the left on issues that matter to many believers'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Religious voters may disagree with President Trump's rhetoric and tone, but Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden "is not an option" for them in the 2020 election Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee said Sunday.
"The Democratic Party has been slowly moving further and further to the left on issues that matter to many believers such as Israel, abortion, traditional marriage," Huckabee told "Fox & Friends Weekend."
TRUMP, BIDEN TRADE JABS ON FAITH
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"These are areas where if the government and society as a whole doesn’t want to embrace a biblical standard, Christians just want to be left the heck alone. We don’t want someone to impose a very secular leftist standard on the church," Huckabee, an ordained Christian minister, explained.
The former governor's comments come after Trump told Fox News correspondent-at-large, Geraldo Rivera, on Thursday that Biden, a practicing Roman Catholic, and the Democrats are "against the Bible" and claimed that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is "against God."
The Biden campaign hit Trump in response over his photo in front of St. John's Church amid police brutality protests and as the Republican president seeks to shore up his evangelical base.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Joe Biden's faith is at the core of who he is; he's lived it with dignity his entire life, and it's been a source of strength and comfort in times of extreme hardship," Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates told Fox News.
"Donald Trump is the only president in our history to have tear-gassed peaceful Americans and thrown a priest out of her church just so he could profane it -- and a Bible -- for his own cynical optics as he sought to tear our nation apart at a moment of crisis and pain."
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The fight between the two comes as a Catholic group publically criticized Biden for his silence on the "rising climate of anti-Catholicism across the country” and his failure to address the issue on the national stage.
Huckabee praised Trump for being a "champion for religious liberty," contrasting him to Biden, who he called "a champion for the left."
Huckabee later addressed a recent op-ed published on Politico headlined "Could These Evangelical Democrats Change the Party?" The column suggests that religious voters are "horrified by Trump and hope to pull their fellow Christians away from the GOP," a sentiment Huckabee called "wishful thinking on the part of the media."
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" I read that and thought 'this is wishful thinking on the part of the media,'" he said. "This is where leftists are trying to gin up this idea that somehow, Joe Biden is appealing to people of faith. That’s utter nonsense. I don’t know of anybody, people of faith, who think Joe Biden is a great choice.
"Now, granted," Huckabee acknowledged, "some of them aren’t happy with everything Donald Trump says or tweets, but I tell you, they’re not going to go with Biden. That’s not an option."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Fox News' Caleb Parke contributed to this report.