Donald Trump's 'Hatred, Intolerance' Branded a Threat to Human Rights; Mike Huckabee Slams Report
President-elect Donald Trump has been branded a threat to human rights by the Human Rights Watch organization, accusing his presidential campaign of "fomenting hatred and intolerance," but former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee has called out what he sees as hypocrisy in such accusations.
"Donald Trump's election as US president after a campaign fomenting hatred and intolerance, and the rising influence of political parties in Europe that reject universal rights, have put the postwar human rights system at risk," HRW said in a press release last week, promoting its 687-page World Report on human rights threats around the world.
"(Trump's) campaign floated proposals that would harm millions of people, including plans to engage in massive deportations of immigrants, to curtail women's rights and media freedoms, and to use torture," added HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth.
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"Unless Trump repudiates these proposals, his administration risks committing massive rights violations in the US and shirking a longstanding, bipartisan belief, however imperfectly applied, in a rights-based foreign policy agenda."
HRW highlights human rights abuses around the world, in places like China, the Philippines, Syria and others, and has also reported on the rising persecution of Christians.
Huckabee, who is also a Christian minister and former GOP presidential hopeful, slammed the report, however, and suggested that Trump was not being treated fairly by the international community.
"The group Human Rights Watch has launched an attack on Donald Trump for all the terrible human rights abuses they're sure he'll be responsible for after he becomes President," Huckabee wrote in a Facebook response on Monday.
"One of the quoted Twitter commenters hit the nail on the head with this observation: 'Trump gets on the list before doing anything as POTUS. [President Barack] Obama gets a Nobel before doing anything as POTUS. I sense a pattern,'" he added.
Obama received the Nobel Peace Price in 2009, in the very first year of his presidency, which drew mixed reactions, with the majority of Americans at the time believing he did not deserve the award, according to a Gallup survey.
The October 2009 Gallup poll found that that 61 percent disagreed with the decision to award Obama the Nobel Peace Price, with only 34 percent agreeing, while 47 percent said they were not personally glad that he won — compared to 46 percent who answered that they were glad with the development.
Huckabee has spoken up in defense of Trump on numerous occasions. Back in November he told Fox News that he had discussed a possible cabinet role with the President-elect, but it was not "the right fit."
"Primarily cabinet but as to which agency, the reason that I wouldn't discuss it is because somebody's going to get that slot and I don't want them to think that they are No. 2," he said at the time.
