GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who dropped in at
Donald Trump's veterans' fundraiser along with Rick Santorum after their undercard debate, said making an appearance was "a great opportunity to stand up for the veterans of America."
"Many [of them] are getting gut punched every day by a system who does not want to give them what they not only deserve, but what they desperately need," the former Arkansas governor told
CNN's "New Day" program.
"None of us want to see a suicide rate of 22 a day, which is just disgraceful in this country."
Huckabee said he doesn't understand skeptics who are saying that real policy reform, not special events to use veterans for political reasons, should be the focus.
"Last night over $6 million was raised for veterans groups
— $6 million towards helping these people," Huckabee said. "The truth is there shouldn't have to be any outside veterans groups to help veterans. There shouldn't be any. That is a responsibility of the United States of America.
"They should be getting the first fruits of our treasury. Everyone else ought to wait in line until the veterans gets served and then everyone else lines up behind them. That's not how it is happening. People are waiting three months, six months to get treated."
Trump chose not to come to the debate because of his disagreement with Fox News' refusal to remove Megyn Kelly as a moderator, but Huckabee pointed out he showed up and he doesn't "have a beef" with the network, where he had his own show for six and a half years.
"They don't treat me any way special because I was there," he said. "Sometimes I feel like they go out of their way making sure I don't get special treatment . . . I offered to take [Trump's] podium last night, which I think they should have let me do. Unfortunately, that didn't go over very well."
Meanwhile, Huckabee told MSNBC's
"Morning Joe" program that he disagrees with offers from Ted Cruz' super PACs and Carly Fiorina to give veterans' causes millions in exchange for one-on-one debates with Trump.
"If it's conditioned upon a debate then is it about the veterans or is it about them getting a debate?" he said. "I went and I got nothing out of it other than just to go and I got — by a lot of people — criticized for showing up at some other candidate's event.
"I'm sure that there will be people who say I shouldn't have. In fact, even on my own Facebook page I had criticism from some of my own supporters. But you know what? I didn't ask for anything other than he's going to do a salute to the vets."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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