Feature image: Mike Huckabee was tapped by President Donald Trump to serve as ambassador to Israel. (Photo by Steve Lewis)
As such spaces go, Mike Huckabee’s home office is a humdinger. The first room upon entry holds a trove of guitars, bass guitars and miscellaneous stringed instruments that fill half of the room’s available wall surface, many signed in tribute by famous musicians. The instruments hover over a jam space that includes a full drum kit and more than a couple of amps. Another wall is given to bookshelves jammed with various memorabilia, including a dozen photos of Huckabee playing or kibbitzing with bands of various genres.
Beyond that lies the office proper, a space that tells of his other passions — the military, public service, and, most of all, his faith and family. An oversized TV monitor on one side flashes the news of the day, of which he has been central or ancillary for decades. A window behind the desk gives a sprawling view of the grounds outside, welcoming even in winter. His two beloved dogs loll about his feet.
It begs the question, then, after coming through the wars of politics at the state level and on the national stage — with an adoring family nearby and a lucrative career as an author, pundit and opinion-shaper at hand — why he accepted a job circulating in one of the most dangerous places on the planet for the next four years. Late last year, Huckabee was tapped by President Donald Trump as the next ambassador to Israel, to serve one of the world’s more complicated regions where conflict is common and peace a fleeting thing.
“I didn’t want a federal job,” he said. “I wasn’t interested in a title. I had a great title. I was governor of Arkansas and I loved it. I was enjoying the private sector. Life was good. Life is good.
“Interestingly, it’s the only thing [Trump] could’ve asked me to do that I would’ve said yes to, really. In his first term, I was asked to do two different cabinet positions and two ambassadorships, and I said no. This was the one thing that he could’ve asked me that I couldn’t say no to.”
Given Huckabee’s background as an ordained minister, it would be easy to chalk up his enthusiasm for Israel as purely evangelical, but such thinking sells both the man and his mission short. Israel itself has never been that one-dimensional, a postwar political state created on Jewish sacred land first described in the Bible and surrounded by regional neighbors ranging from merely tolerant to openly hostile. No mere man of God would last very long in such an environment, and while Huckabee’s faith is unwavering, it is buttressed by an encyclopedic knowledge of the region, a plainspoken style of statesmanship and, most of all, a reverence for the land itself.
“My first trip to Israel was 1973, 17 years old, a month away from my 18th birthday,” he said. “It was just three months before the Yom Kippur War, but of course, no one knew that was right on the horizon. I fell in love with Israel on that very first trip. I went all over the Middle East. I went to Lebanon and Syria, Jordan, Greece. I can’t even remember all the places — eight or so countries in that trip — but there was something about Israel that was so magnetic to me.”
The allure of the place kept pulling Huckabee back for visits, in times both joyful and tragic, including in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack by Hamas. The terror group led other fundamentalist Palestinian radicals in an assault, the first invasion of Israel since 1948. The attacks coincided with the Jewish religious holiday, Simchat Torah, dropped thousands of rockets, and resulted in nearly 1,200 Israeli dead, 250 hostages taken and many atrocities committed for good measure.
When Huckabee visited the area following the attacks, what he saw there, he said, was shocking.
“I went over there, just a few weeks after it happened. I was there talking to survivors, families of victims, government officials,” he said. “I was so blown away by the intensity of what [Hamas] did. When people say, ‘Well, they may not have really done that,’ they did; and the reason we know it is because they actually wore GoPro cameras on their helmets and they videotaped it.
“The raping of women in front of their own families. Can you imagine anything more disgusting than that? Burning babies in front of their mothers, beheading babies in front of their parents — things that are the mark of savagery.”
The attack touched off an Israeli response designed to wipe Hamas off the face of the planet, a military effort alternatingly supported and scolded by the Biden administration. It also touched off a rash of protests against Israel in American cities, particularly on college campuses, opening new outlets for antisemitic attitudes while straining U.S.-Israeli relations.
“There were times when the Biden administration was very, very spot-on in their support for Israel, especially in the early days after Oct. 7, and I would commend him for that,” Huckabee said, “but their relationship and their policies overall were schizophrenic. On one day, we’re ironclad. There’s not a bit of daylight between us and Israel. We stand with our ally.
“Then they would come out with an announcement and say, ‘We’re going to withhold arms sales to Israel because we don’t like the way they’re prosecuting the war.’ I’m thinking, you know, why don’t you put more pressure on the people who murdered 1,200 civilians? It was very frustrating to sometimes see the Biden administration come out and give lectures to Israel on how they ought to be treating the people in Gaza when the people in Gaza were being treated much more horribly by their own leadership, Hamas.”
As for the argument of protestors, who were never publicly chastised by Biden or vice-president-turned-presidential-candidate Kamala Harris, even as rhetoric escalated and Jewish students were terrorized, Huckabee merely snorted.
“Most of these kids out screaming ‘from the river to the sea’ couldn’t tell you which river, which sea and what was in between it. They had no idea,” he said. “They’re the most educated idiots, I think, we’ve seen in the past 100 years. It’s really disturbing to me that parents are spending $70,000, $80,000 a year for the little darlings to go to an Ivy League school, and they end up becoming uneducated fools.
“I don’t care what a person’s political persuasion may be. A nation like Israel has a right to say, ‘We are going to prevent that from ever happening again.’ If [Hamas] would do this, and they did it proudly, and they declared that they would do it again and again and again, then eradicating them is the only option.”
During the interview for this article and others, Huckabee did not dilute his strong language concerning Israel, its enemies or any other conservative topic, for that matter. He did it having yet to be confirmed, at this writing, so convicted is he of the imperative of standing up for the principles he sees as fundamentally American, be they played out at home or overseas, defending one of the U.S.’s few stanchion allies in a volatile region of the world.
“We had government officials who empowered Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis by letting the pressure off of the Iranians, which, to me, is the big policy disaster of the Biden administration,” he said. “When Trump was in office before, he had applied maximum pressure to Iran, and he put that pressure on them in such a way that they were just about bankrupt from not being able to sell their oil to any country that wanted to do business with us. It put them in a position where their government was on the verge of collapse. They couldn’t fund their nuclear deal. They couldn’t fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or any other of their proxies.
“Day one, Biden comes in, relaxes the sanctions that immediately releases billions of dollars into the hands of the Iranians. What did they do with it? Did they build schools, hospitals, roads? No, they funded terrorism across the world. In September [2024], I was back in Israel on the northern border at Lebanon and walked through communities that had been deserted because the rocket fire was so intense everyone had to move out. Who paid for those rockets? The Iranians; but again, we put more pressure on Israel than we have Iran. Why? Makes no sense. We should have made it very clear: Not only are we going to put the sanctions back on, but [Iran is] going to pay a heavy price for having funded these acts of terrorism.”
Huckabee’s assessment of the region and its recent problems echoes that of Ronald Reagan, who has his own dedicated spot on the office wall. Like Reagan, Huckabee’s career has been built on inviolate principles funneled through homespun rhetoric that engages people, even when talking line-in-the-sand issues. His attributes — a mix of God-given communicative ability, instinct and conservative beliefs shaped and hardened on the anvil of politics — are woven from fibers of character both inherently likable and showing an appetite for the righteous fight.
He entered the political arena with a stumble, losing a bid for U.S. Senate in 1992 to incumbent Dale Bumpers. That same election cycle would send Gov. Bill Clinton to the White House, elevate Arkansas Lt. Gov. Jim Guy Tucker to the state’s top spot and create a special election in summer 1993 for the lieutenant governor’s job. Huckabee ran and won with 51 percent of the vote, then cruised to reelection in 1994. He was only the second Republican since Reconstruction to hold the office.
The next few years would be eventful ones, starting with the late U.S. Sen. David Pryor announcing his retirement in 1995. Huckabee announced he was running to fill the seat and then switched gears after Tucker was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in May 1996, prompting him to announce his impending resignation. Huckabee said he would drop out of the Senate race and step in to serve the remainder of the governor’s term. Tucker would make one last-ditch play to remain in office, but the looming threat of formal impeachment cooled the effort, and Huckabee was sworn in as governor that July.
He won reelection to full terms in 1998 and 2002, making his total tenure the third-longest in Arkansas history and, despite being succeeded in the governor’s office by Democrat Mike Beebe, sowed the seeds of political upheaval in the process. After decades of Democrats’ stranglehold on power, Republicans threw the political apparatchik on its back within a few election cycles and today hold a super majority in both houses of the state legislature and a clean sweep of constitutional offices at the state and federal levels.
Huckabee has been a longtime supporter of Israel and has made multiple trips to the Holy Land. (YouTube)
Huckabee launched a media career in 2008, first as a Fox political contributor and via The Huckabee Report political commentary program, replaced later by a weekend show, Huckabee, now carried by Trinity Broadcasting Network. He has also authored numerous books.
In 2022, he watched his daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, be elected the state’s first female governor, the youngest governor in the country at that time, and became one half of a rare club of governors whose daughters have also held gubernatorial office.
He has two presidential campaigns to his credit, in 2008 and 2016, during the latter of which he endorsed eventual winner Donald Trump. Of the once and future president, Huckabee said he admired the polarizing New York businessman from the first.
“I’ve said all along, look, you may dislike Donald Trump’s personality. I personally appreciate it because it’s honest and transparent,” he said. “I’d rather have a guy tell me what he thinks than pretend that he or she is something and be not what they present. When I was a pastor, the thing that really frustrated me most is when people in my presence would suddenly say, ‘Oh I was just praying about that.’ I don’t want to hear all that nonsense. Be who you are. If you’re a foul-mouthed person, you know what? I can handle that. I’m not a prude. Be who you are, and say what you feel. I’m OK with that.
“The thing I’ve loved about Trump is authenticity. It’s refreshing. Most everybody who runs for office learns to be careful. Trump never learned to be careful. I’ve told people, ‘You say you hate Trump because you’ve never been around him.’ If you’re in the room with him, he’s hilariously funny. He has a great sense of humor. He’s also a phenomenal listener. He engages in the conversation, but he wants people in that room to converse with each other. He doesn’t dominate it.”
Were he to be confirmed, and Huckabee was careful to underscore that has not yet happened, he said he is eager to be a part of what he sees as a righting of the American reputation in the world.
“An ambassador’s job is not to go and impose his or her policy. It’s to carry the policy of the president who made the appointment,” he said. “You are the president’s official representative to that country, to their government. Your job is to be the liaison between the United States and our leadership and the government of the host country. That would mean, obviously, building relationships with the prime minister, with whom I’ve had a relationship for over 30 years, so that’s comfortable.
“I know the speaker of the Knesset. I know the foreign minister. I know dozens of members of the Knesset personally. Many of the cabinet ministers in Israel I’ve known because I’ve been going over there for 52 years. It’s not an area that I’m going to have to go in and look around and say, ‘My gosh, where am I?’ I’ll know my way around both geographically but also in terms of the people. That is, obviously, a big plus, but it’s not my job to go and tell them what I think. It’s my job to carry the policy of the president, the secretary of state and the Congress and to relate that to the host government.”
Huckabee’s nomination is one of three major roles in the Trump administration in which nominees have Arkansas ties. Warren Stephens, second-generation leader of investment bank Stephens, has been nominated for the plum U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom post, and Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, who completed her medical residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, has been nominated for U.S. surgeon general. Huckabee said for the state to have played a role in producing three individuals deemed worthy for such important jobs speaks well of Arkansas.
“I’m so proud, especially of Warren Stevens. That’s a big deal,” he said. “That’s a huge thing, and he’s perfect for it. He’s been doing business in the U.K., so he’s well familiar with that. He’s not going have to get out a tourist map to find his way around. He’ll know the landscape quite well. He’ll make us proud — not just us, Arkansas, proud. He’ll make America proud.”
As for himself, Huckabee plans to keep things simple should he be confirmed — or as simple and reductive as one can be in a spot on the globe as complicated at the Middle East. He said there is more to the place than just war and conflict and that another reason for standing with Israel is the innovation and development that flourishes there, even though American headlines rarely acknowledge it.
“Over these 52 years, I’ve seen the desert bloom. I’ve seen the dry bones come to life, biblical prophecy before my eyes in ways that are so stark,” he said. “I’ve told people, I haven’t just read those scriptures; I’ve watched them. I’ve watched areas that used to be just dust and rock that are now lush, producing vegetation, fruits and vegetables being shipped all over the world. The Israelis have built an incredible nation there. People have no idea they’re one of the most prolific technology centers in the world. They have 0.18 percent of the world’s population and 30 to 40 percent of Nobel Prizes in fields related to science, medicine and technology.
“A lot of the medical procedures we take for granted here in the U.S. were actually developed in Israel. We wouldn’t have cell phones without Israel. They created the SIM card. We wouldn’t have the heart stent or the camera that you swallow and it lets the doctor look at your insides. Nobody has done more in hydrology, the use of water, how to get the most use of it, desalinization plants. When I first went there, it was a thirsty country, and they learned how to maximize every drop of water to the point places that were total desert are now some of the most productive farmland in the world.”
As for what lies on the other side of this adventure, Huckabee can only guess. Time waits for no one, and while he casts a youthful energy, he knows such adventures increasingly belong to those younger than he. Perhaps that was what shone most brightly in his tone as he discussed the opportunity that lies before him in the next four years, God and Senate willing — one last campaign in a part of the world far removed by distance but close to his heart and mind.
“It is so very powerful, the impact that Israel has had on me,” he said. “The only way I can describe it is it’s like being at home in a place I’d never been. I don’t understand how to explain that, but I just feel like I belong there. You know, this is something special.”
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