GOP presidential candidate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he won’t judge fellow GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) Christian faith, but that God will.
“I’m not going to judge his Christian faith because, look, God is going to judge mine, he’s going to judge his,” Huckabee said when questioned about Cruz’s charitable donations and whether or not protecting marriage is a priority for Cruz during an interview on The O’Reilly Factor on Thursday.
Huckabee told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, “Nobody has caught me saying something different in New York than I say in Sioux Center. If I tell somebody something in Marshalltown, Iowa, they will hear the exact same things in Manhattan.”
Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist Minister, was referencing an earlier report from Politico that Cruz allegedly said he would make protecting marriage a priority while on the campaign trail, but said something different during a fundraiser in New York.
“I have been asked a lot of questions,” Huckabee told O’Reilly about Cruz. “And I have pointed out that if someone is going to say they are consistent, they need to be consistent. One of the things that I feel I have brought to this race is that nobody has caught me saying something different in New York than I say in Sioux Center.”
O’Reilly said, “You are a straight-talking guy. Look, you said about Cruz, how can you be a rabid Christian if you don’t give any money to charity? That’s a pretty tough statement.”
“I didn’t say that about Cruz. I was asked a question generally,” Huckabee defended.
And I said I don’t think you can put God last in your budget if you claim he is first in your life. I was talking about me. Look, the fact is Christian stewardship is something I believe in. I believed in it when my wife and I were dirt poor and living in a $40-a-month-rent house. I believed it when we had a lot more money. But we’ve always given nothing less than a tithe of income to our church for the simple reason that that’s how it is supposed to be.
O’Reilly was referencing a recent Buzzfeed report that alleged, “Evangelicals and political opponents want to know why Cruz gave less than one percent of income to charity between 2006 and 2010.”
When asked about Cruz’s donation amount, Huckabee told Buzzfeed, “It’s hard to say God is first in your life if he’s last in your budget.”
Huckabee then told O’Reilly that this is “something [Cruz] needs to answer.”
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