If you set aside the politics, the story of the American family that is the Huckabee family is a heartening one. I often think of them when I think of the hardworking white Christian families from the heartland who supported Trump’s candidacy.

The Huckabees are good country people, even when they try to be pretentious. They are salt of the earth, and that’s just who they are. It’s what fills their hearts with blood. They were much like the people who educated me in schools and in churches. Those lessons and values can’t help but inform how I view the world.

Or at least that’s how I saw them as I reported from Little Rock back when they were the state’s first family. (Maybe they’re all sellouts now!)

The couple married young and poor. She wore a dress her mother made. He gave her a soda-can tab for a ring.

Mike Huckabee was a Baptist preacher who became governor of Arkansas, ran for president, twice, and became a media figure. He plays bass guitar. He dealt courageously with a weight problem, and through that battle encouraged others to take up distance running.

Janet Huckabee, as the first lady of Arkansas, didn’t put on airs. She went on rattlesnake hunts. She jumped out of airplanes.

When The Natural State governor’s mansion needed renovations, the Huckabees happily lived in a double-wide trucked onto the grounds. They didn’t just suck it up, they relished the experience as a way to push back at the snobbery directed at those who live in trailers or marginal housing.

If you had gone to the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses for the governor’s first run, you would have seen everyday families who trekked in from all over the country to cheer him on. Mike and Janet drew crowds at tiny country churches that stretched into the lawn — in near zero-degree weather.

The people in the crowds would have told you they loved the Huckabees because they were good country people. Salt of the earth.

During the last several days of the James Comey firing, and Trump’s meltdown, I’ve often thought of what happened to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mike and Janet’s daughter who now serves as the principal deputy White House press secretary.

In a fit of provincialism, I found and find Trump’s treatment of her as an affront of the highest order. Press secretaries have a tough job. To do it, they must trust their reputation will hold up over time. They must trust that their boss will back them up by, at the very least, making sure their stories line up. And this is Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ first time on the big stage. A young person’s make-it-or-break-it opportunity.

But President Donald Trump sent her into the maelstrom of all those hotshot reporters with a false narrative. When she gamely gave it her all, in her first times at the podium, she endured national ridicule. And then Trump cut the legs out from under her arguments almost before the butterflies in her stomach stopped fluttering around like those lightning bugs in Trump’s brain.

Why do good salt of the earth people still like this man? Why do they trust him with what is sacred to them?

In the way that he has lived his life, Trump reflects open disdain for their values. A Christian marriage? Forget it! Striving to cultivate a servant’s heart? Pathetic! Living modestly? Ridiculous! Treating others humbly and with respect? Strictly for losers! Serving the Lord with the faith of a child? Strictly for total losers! Honesty? You’re killing me!

Trump is like those hypocrites, the Pharisees, and that den of thieves, the moneychangers in the temple that Jesus famously sent packing.

What he just did to Sarah Huckabee Sanders is what he is doing to those salt of the earth folks who supported him.

He’s using them like playthings he throws away.

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