Tuesday on Newsmax TV’s “The Hard Line,” Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) refused to criticize his rival former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson for saying he believes a Muslim would not be qualified to be president and instead turned the focus to President Barack Obama.

Huckabee said “There is no religious test for a person to hold public office in America. I’m less concerned about what faith a person has, I’m more concerned about the authenticity of their faith and how that plays out in their policies.”

In referring to Obama, Huckabee said, “I’m also concerned about a guy that believes he’s a Christian and pretends to be and then says he is, but does things that makes it very difficult for people to practice their Christian faith. I’m disappointed if a person says, ‘I’m a Christian,’ but you invite the Pope into your home and then you invite a whole bunch of people who are at odds with the Catholic Church policy. I think there’s something very unseemly about that.”