Green: Really?

Huckabee: Yeah. Nobody pretends that he would be an ideal Sunday-school teacher, to be fair. I don’t think he is a person who is deeply acquainted with the Bible and he’s not known to set attendance records at church. But he’s very respectful of people of faith. And that’s really all people in the Christian community want. They don’t care whether or not the guy believes as they do. They just want someone who will respect their beliefs, and not denigrate them, and not try to use the power of government to silence them. And he’s been very adamant and clear that he believes in religious liberty, believes that people’s beliefs should be protected.

Green: You once wrote a book called Character Makes a Difference, and you’ve observed that “character is that which causes you to make the same decision in public as you would make in private.” We’ve seen evidence not just that the president isn’t acquainted with the Bible, or perhaps isn’t a Sunday school teacher, but that he’s made comments or taken actions in private that don’t necessarily show strong character. Are you troubled by this at all?

Huckabee: Many of the things that have been attributed to him, that he even in fact admitted saying, were things that were 12, 15 years ago—20 years and beyond. Would I like for him to speak every day with the most extraordinary sense of faith? Sure.

But I’ll tell you what I’d rather have. To me, character is if you’re the same in public as you are in private, and I think that in many ways, that’s what’s appealing about him. It’s also what gives a lot of his critics their ammunition. Even his tweets, for example, are very transparent about what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling. But some of the more harsh things that have been attributed to him were things that were said many years ago, and there’s been no indication that during his campaign and during his presidency has he said things that would cause people to just be aghast at what he had said. We’ve had presidents that have done things while they were in the Oval Office that frankly were very destructive and embarrassing. And I don’t think anybody has made those allegations about this president.

Green: Under President Trump, evangelicals seem to have become more influential, certainly more than in the previous administration. Why do you think it is that evangelicals have been such counselors for President Trump?

Huckabee: I think they respect his candor. They respect the fact that he has been very honest with them. He has not pretended that he’s sitting on the front row of church or that he’s memorized any Bible verses. And I think they’re frankly refreshed by that honesty. But more importantly, they want a president who simply respects them—who recognizes that underneath all the Bill of Rights is religious liberty. Lose that, and they lose everything else. If the government can begin to put restrictions on what a person believes, then the government can put a restriction on what a person says, what he thinks, where he goes, with whom he associates, with how he conducts his or her life. And that is really the essence of the loss of freedom.