Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who ended his GOP presidential run earlier this year, said Thursday that everyday voters don’t care about Donald Trump’s gaffe saying anti-abortion laws should punish women for terminating a pregnancy.

Mr. Huckabee said voters are more concerned with electing a president who will “kick tail and take names” than someone who knows the correct political answer to abortion questions.

“If you talk to people in line at the grocery story and you talk to people at a restaurant and you go up and down the streets, they are not talking about the little nuances of what a candidate says,” Mr. Huckabee said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.

“They are scared to death [that] they’re never going to have a good job again, their country is going to be invaded by people who will change their culture and come to terrorize America like Europe has been terrorized, and frankly they are willing to let some little things about a guy’s statements go by,” he said.

“They want to know are you going to make us better or worse, are you going to protect us, are you going to make us vulnerable like Europe,” he said. “And I think that is what is getting missed in this entire election.”

Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, caused a furor among both pro-life and pro-choice activistsWednesday when he said that under an abortion ban women should be punished for having an abortion.

He later walked back the comment to align himself with the longstanding pro-life position that doctors should be punished for performing abortions in violation to anti-abortion laws.

The abortion dustup was the latest in a series of perceived missteps by Mr. Trump on policy issues, including advocating nuclear proliferation to Japan and South Korea, which contradicts the United State’s longstanding commitment to nonproliferation.

But Mr. Huckabee, a pro-life adherent, said voters just don’t care about policy intricacies or whether Mr. Trump has thought them through.

“I thought all those issues through and I was ready for every one of the questions you are talking about but today I’m sitting in a chair as an unemployed ex-candidate talking to you about a guy who didn’t think them through who is the front-runner,” he said.

“This is what I hear all the time: ‘You know what, he’ll surround himself with people. They’ll fill in the blanks but by gosh I believe he’ll kick tail and take names and that’s what we need right now,’” said Mr. Huckabee.

Mr. Huckabee has not endorsed Mr. Trump, but he has frequently defended the candidate and his daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

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