On The Kelly File last night, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee argued that the controversy surrounding Indiana’s new Religious Freedom and Restoration Act "is a manufactured crisis by the left.”
“This is a manufactured crisis by the left,” he said.
“If they manufactured as many products as they do crises like this one, which is an utterly phony attempt to create some kind of division, 92 million Americans who are jobless would have jobs.”
Huckabee went on to explain why the backlash over the law has gotten out of hand:
“I’ve never seen anything so utterly off the mark in my life as trying to pretend that the RFRA law is actually discrimination,” he said. “It is most certainly not.”
“It simply gives you access to the court, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to win if you go,” he argued.
Huckabee then issued a rebuttal to Connecticut governor Dan Malloy (D), who, during a previous appearance on The Kelly File, argued that the RFRA law serves a means for Republicans to “condemn gay people to second class citizenship in America.”
“There’s nothing in the RFRA that in any way says a thing about homosexuality, gay marriage,” he said. “Your previous guest [Gov. Malloy] doesn’t know the difference between discrimination and discretion.”
The former Fox News host explained, “Discrimination is if, when someone comes into the pizza place, they’re turned away because they’re black, because they’re female, or because they’re gay. Although I honestly don’t know how you would know someone is gay just because they walked in and ordered a pepperoni pizza. But discretion is something that every American should have the right to exercise.
“If you come to my place and order cupcakes or a donut, I’ll serve you. If you want me to show up and deliver a cake with two men on top it, because I’m a Christian, because I believe the biblical definition of marriage, then I’m not going to be able to do that.”
“That’s not discrimination,” he argued, “that’s discretion.”
Watch the rest of Huckabee’s remarks below.