With Friends Like These

It's hard when people you are proud to call your friend do or say things that are offensive and/or embarrassing. I've previously spoken out about how my brilliant, former boss on "Celebrity Apprentice" Donald Trump unnecessarily insulted the entire Mexican race including the 35 million Mexican Americans with his sloppy statements implying that all immigrants from Mexico are rapists and drug dealers. Although he has subsequently moderated those statements, he still has some way to go to undo the damage done.

Similarly, Trump's terribly insensitive statements about Senator John McCain's revered war record, which gratuitously insulted all POW's was difficult to bear. There too he has retreated somewhat, yet has not clearly apologized to the community of POW's.

Now another friend running for president has made a statement too far.

Governor Mike Huckabee is one of the nicest men you can ever hope to meet. We were colleagues for years at Fox News. He's friendly, concerned about others, funny, sincere and competent. He had an enviable record as governor of Arkansas; he's a top notch broadcaster and he plays a mean guitar.

But Mike's statements comparing the proposed Iran nuclear deal to the Holocaust made me gag.

“This President’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naïve that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven." 

"The oven?"

If anything, that statement is even more outrageous than anything Trump ever said. Some things are sacred and should never be used to score cheap political points. 6 million Jews were murdered in those ovens by Nazi's in the Holocaust. The blood-soaked fascist regime killed half the Jewish population of Earth. It was a monstrously wicked deed that will live in infamy. 

For Mike to compare the efforts of the Obama Administration along with five other world powers to contain and control Iran's nuclear ambitions to the slaughter of the Jewish race by Hitler is really beyond the pale. It is cheap rhetoric probably designed to steal the spotlight from the ubiquitous Mr. Trump. The president said of the remarks that they would be considered, “ridiculous if they weren’t so sad.” For shame Mike. For shame.