Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that endorsements from the Duggar family “will be back” on his website, dismissing speculation he had removed them to distance himself from the scandalized family.
In an interview with conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace, Huckabee said endorsements from the family of TLC’s “19 and Counting” were not removed from his campaign website but are instead rotating with others.
“Well, on our website, I just want to get this … this will help nail this, on our website we have a list of rotating people who have endorsed us,” Huckabee said, according to audio Media Matters provided to IJReview. “They were one of them, but they are rotating. Their particular piece rotated off and some more on. There are several hundred that are going to rotate on and off. The Duggars, in fact, will be back.”
The Duggars have recently come under scandal after a 2006 police report showed the family’s eldest son, Josh, molested five underage girls as a teenager. Four of the girls were Duggar’s younger sisters, according to parents Jim Bob and Michelle.
Huckabee also decried media outlets that reported the endorsements were removed in a possible attempt to distance the candidate from the family.
“There are probably 200 websites and news sites including Time and all sorts of legitimate news sources that are printing and blogging that we have distanced ourselves, that I have run from them, that we have decoupled,” Huckabee said. “You know how many called our office to ask if that was true. It’s like zero. Not one called to find out what happened.”
The Duggars, residents of Arkansas, have been long allies of their former governor and endorsed his 2008 presidential bid as well. Huckabee issued support for Josh Duggar and the family in late May after the news broke of the child molestation allegations.
“Janet and I want to affirm our support for the Duggar family. Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ‘inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable,'” Huckabee wrote on his Facebook page.
