Former Arkansas Governor turned Fox News talking head Mike Huckabee has announced he has ended his bid to become the 2016 Republican presidential nominee.

Huckabee tweeted the news just after 10pm on Monday night, writing, ‘I am officially suspending my campaign. Thank you for all your loyal support. #ImWithHucK’

Huckabee had received less than 2 percent of the vote in the Republicans’ Iowa caucus where Senator Ted Cruz finally crawled ahead of former front runner to be the Republicans’ presidential pick. Donald Trump

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, had been arguably the most outspoken anti-LGBTI candidate in a field rich with anti-LGBTI candidates, warning that the US Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states risked God visiting a punishment on the United States like the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah and comparing it to slavery.

Huckabee also suggested that if he was still in school he would pretend to be transgender just to spy on young girls in change rooms and bathrooms and attacked the idea of transgender people being able to serve openly in the US military, saying ‘The military is not a social experiment.’

Huckabee held a rally in support of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis after she was jailed for refusing to perform the duties of her job after same-sex marriage came to her home state, welcoming her on her release from prison.

Of the remaining candidates former senator Rick Santorum and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson are probably the most outspoken in their intolerance towards LGBTIs in the remaining Republican field.

Santorum received about 1 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus. However Carson received 8 percent of the vote, putting him in fourth place behind Cruz, Trump and Senator Marco Rubio in third.