Mike Huckabee said it would be “ludicrous” and “foolish” to elect a president who didn’t have executive experience in government, a not so veiled shot at GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
Appearing on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper on Monday, Huckabee downplayed the “temperament” required to be president while emphasizing “maturity, judgment, whether they’ve had executive experience.”
“A few weeks ago I was on an airplane and the plane was delayed and delayed and we waited on a flight crew and the person at the gate said, ‘Hey, would anyone like to volunteer to fly the plane?’ Everybody laughed because it was ludicrous to think you would put a person, a total volunteer in the cockpit, fly people who had never been in the cockpit before,” Huckabee suggested.
“How foolish would it be to put the future of America in the hands of somebody who’d never been in the cockpit, in other words who had never governed, who had never been in the executive seat of power,” Huckabee argued. “I don’t think our country’s in a position where we can afford on the job training or find out after a person gets there whether they have any skills and aptitude to be an executive in government.”
The former Arkansas governor explained, “It’s a very different experience than being on a legislature. It’s also very different than being on a legislature, and it’s also very different than being a CEO or an executive in the private sector, of which I’ve been. But governing is different, Jake and I think people will start getting that more clearly in mind as we get closer to voting.”