Former GOP presidential candidate and always-eager amateur comedian Mike Huckabee claims the passing of evangelical icon Billy Graham this morning is actually “fake news.”

While the rest of the world shared the news of the 99-year-old’s death, Huckabee insisted that Graham was “more alive than” ever, referencing the evangelist’s time in the supposed afterlife.

Huckabee said the following to Fox Business host Charles Payne today:

Well, when I heard the news that Billy Graham was dead I said, ‘now there’s a real example of fake news.’ Why? Because Billy Graham is more alive right now than he’s ever been. And frankly Charles, if he’s not, if Billy Graham is not alive and with with the Lord right now, then everything he lived for everything he preached is an utter hoax. I’m convinced confident that today — while his physical body may have worn out at age 99 — he is very much alive and the life he lives right now is a life that will never end.

He went on to argue that, because of faith in the Christian God, “even when we with die it’s not the last chapter of our lives” — to which Payne responded with a bassy, reaffirming, “Amen.”

Huckabee’s response to the death may strike as odd to some, but he is apparently not the first to frame the reverend’s passing in such a way, as Graham himself suggested as much.

“Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead—don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God,” Graham said prior to his death.

Watch above, via Fox News.

[images via screengrab]

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