Mike Huckabee says Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be “appalled” by the Black Lives Matter movement, and that “it’s more of a sin problem than a skin problem.”
The Republican presidential contender and former Arkansas governor said Tuesday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he’s bothered by the movement’s focus on one ethnicity.
“When I hear people scream, ‘black lives matter,’ I think, ‘Of course they do.’ But all lives matter. It’s not that any life matters more than another,” Huckabee said in the interview aired on “The Situation Room.”
“That’s the whole message that Dr. King tried to present, and I think he’d be appalled by the notion that we’re elevating some lives above others,” Huckabee said.
Huckabee said he faced death threats for integrating an all-white church as a pastor 35 years ago.
“I understand how people have great passions. But I also understand that the way you begin to resolve them is, you do it by loving people and treating people with dignity and respect, and you don’t do it by magnifying the problems — you do it by really magnifying the solutions,” he said.
The “Black Lives Matter” movement has increasingly taken hold of the presidential campaign stage.
Protesters — seeking justice for deaths African-Americans while in police custody — have interrupted speeches by two Democratic candidates, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, and got a private audience with Hillary Clinton.