Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Monday denounced fellow GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s reference to the Holocaust amid a criticism of the nuclear deal with Iran.
{mosads}“[T]he use of that kind of language, it’s just wrong. This is not the way we’re going to win elections, that’s not how we’re going to solve problems,” Bush said in Orlando in video captured by MSNBC.
“So, unfortunate remark, not quite sure why he felt compelled to say it. Having said that, this is a bad deal and I can see why people are angry about it,” Bush added, noting that he generally respected Huckabee.
Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has stood by his remark from an interview Saturday that President Obama is marching Israelis to the “door of the oven” with a nuclear deal with Iran.
His comment has drawn rebuke from Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, as well as Jewish groups.
“I find this kind of inflammatory rhetoric totally unacceptable,” Clinton said Monday in Iowa.
Obama, meanwhile, likened Huckabee’s remark to others from Republican opponents of the deal, such as Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), a vocal critic who compared Secretary of State John Kerry to “Pontius Pilate.”
“The Iran deal is horrific, and it creates far more dangers and problems than it solves,” Bush said Monday. “But I think we need to tone down the rhetoric for sure.”
Huckabee, who has criticized for months a deal lifting sanctions on Iran in exchange for new limits on its nuclear program, said Monday that Obama wasn’t taking Iran’s repeated threats to Israel “seriously.”
Bush currently leads all Republican presidential candidates except businessman Donald Trump in a CNN/ORC poll out Sunday, while Huckabee sits around seventh out of more than a dozen hopefuls.