Huckabee’s Dangerous and Misguided Post

As I write, Israel and Iran are in a hot aerial war, attacking each other’s main cities and military sites. There have been over 250 Iranians killed, including over 20 children, and there have been 24 Israeli deaths, with many hundreds of injuries to Iranians and Israelis. The United States is being heavily lobbied by American neocons and the Israel Lobby – yup, the same people who brought you two Iraq Wars and Afghanistan – to jump into yet another disastrous Middle East war. Most experts caution that a regional war with Iran is likely to be much more costly to the United States and its allies than previous Middle East wars. It will mean United States bases in the region will become targets. If the Iranians decide to shut off the Strait of Hormuz, this will threaten oil transports from Saudia Arabia and the Gulf petro-states. This will drive up the price of oil, which will seriously damage the global economy. Nuclear-armed powers Russia and China are allies with Iran, and may lend military and financial support if asked. Recent polls indicate less than 20% of the American public approve of a war with Iran. Yet, the Trump administration seems poised to become more overtly involved.

On June 17, 2025 – right in the midst of the decision about whether to go to war with Iran on Israel’s behalf – Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel sends him a memo meant for public consumption. Its most important excerpts are as follows: “Mr. President, God spared you in Butler, PA to be the most consequential president in a century – maybe ever….You have many voices speaking to you, Sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters, HIS voice….I trust your instincts. No president in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945….I reach out to encourage you. I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine, or ANYONE else’s….You did not seek this moment. This moment sought YOU.” There are several things to keep top-of-mind:

Mike Huckabee is a Christian Zionist and a white Christian nationalist who espouses a messianic ideology that denies the very existence of Palestinians or their occupied lands. He has said “there is no such thing as a Palestinian, and there are no Occupied Palestinian Territories, only ‘Judea and Samaria’, the names that appear in the Bible.” Huckabee fervently believes that God promised the land of Palestine (and Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt) to the Jewish people for all time, and that nothing should get in the way of God’s plan. A key development in this supposed divine plan is that all of the world’s Jews should migrate to Palestine/Israel, destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest sacred site in Islam, and build the Third Jewish Temple on the ruins of Al Aqsa. When these things happen, it means that Jesus Christ will return to earth. Jews will be offered the opportunity to convert to Christianity and be “saved,” or refuse to convert and be condemned to Hell.

Ambassador Huckabee’s views are dangerous heresies. The vast majority of Catholics, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant Christians do not believe these things. A great many Christians worldwide have distanced themselves from these views and publicly denounce them, as do I and other Christians affiliated with Voices for Justice in Palestine. Sadly, though, Christian Zionists are well-organized and well-funded. They are very well-connected to the MAGA movement in American politics. Huckabee’s post came while Trump is deciding whether or not to strike Iran. He was clearly reminding Trump that a substantial portion of his political base is made up of Christian Zionists who are watching. They want Trump to “stand with Israel,” i.e., to help Israel “defeat Iran.”

Rev. Huckabee says he “trusts Trump’s instincts.” Trump’s instincts, his habitual ways of acting, are ego-centered and totally transactional – if you have something he wants, he’s interested; if you don’t have anything that benefits him personally, he’s not interested. If you praise and flatter him, he keeps you around; it you criticize or oppose him, he turns on you. The Christian Zionists and white Christian Nationalists who make up a huge portion of his political base believe, as Huckabee does, that “God spared Trump” from an assassin’s bullet, that he is God’s chosen servant to carry out the wishes of the Christian Right. They see him as a kind of modern-day Cyrus, the 6th c. BCE Persian king who freed the Jews from their long exile in Babylon, a righteous Gentile who saves Jewish lives. Trump’s main donor-adviser on Israel is Miriam Adelson, the widow and heir to the fortune of casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson. You can be sure she is expecting Trump to “stand with Israel,” and he will want to keep her happy. In his first term, Trump unilaterally moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. He said he did it “for the evangelicals; I did it for them.” As they are wont to do, Jewish Zionists and the Christian Zionists are pointing in the same direction. If Trump thinks engaging in Israel’s war against Iran will guarantee his place in history as the “greatest friend of the Israeli people,” he is very likely to do it. As catastrophic as it would be, if he thinks dragging the entire world into the abyss will make him greater in the eyes of his patrons and his base voters, war will be extremely hard for him to turn down.

Mike Huckabee also counseled him to listen to the most important Voice, the Voice of God. Ordinarily, this might be great advice, but Trump is not a person of prayer. He does not pray. He is not accustomed to listening for the “the voice of heaven.” I doubt he’d have the slightest idea what to do if the Spirit of God showed up unbidden in his disordered inner world. I can say this with full assurance, because, as Scripture teaches, “you shall know them by their fruits.” A pathological liar, a sexual predator, a fraudulent businessman, and a twice-impeached felon, this is obviously a man who has long ago spurned a life guided by divine wisdom. Obviously, this is a man who has no trouble separating immigrant families, throwing 16 million Americans off their healthcare, cutting aid to needy mothers with infant children, and shuttering Head Start programs all over the country in order to enrich himself and his billionaire friends. Politically-motivated preachers and power-hungry televangelists pray over him, and puff him up as God’s servant, but the currency that flows through their prayers is not love and justice, and certainly not, as Jesus said, “the things that make for peace.”

Ambassador Huckabee’s reference to “Truman in 1945” is terrifying, since that was the year that President Truman decided to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima, and three days later, on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 246,000 people. The fact that he wraps Trump’s historical moment in the mantle of divine destiny is all the more terrifying. Lord, have mercy.