A short live-stream commentary by TJ Walker criticizing Mike Huckabee for promoting a cinnamon-based diabetes cure via an infomercial and for his dismissive reply—"I don't have to account for everything I've done in my life"—when questioned by Bob Schieffer. Walker argues Huckabee leveraged his public fame to profit from misleading health claims, calls the response a major crisis-mishandling, yet praises Huckabee's communication skills as strong. The piece assesses political consequences (diminished candidate standing) and ethical concerns about potentially harmful medical misinformation.
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Would you like to get rid of your diabetes by simply eating some cinnamon sticks? Sound too good to be true? Well, You might be skeptical of Mike Huckabee as a presidential candidate. Now, Mike Huckabee got into the race officially last week and was grilled over the weekend on the Sunday morning talk shows. Bob Schieffer of CBS News asked him about his whole involvement in an infomercial where he promised to get rid of people's diabetes with some sort of half baked cinnamon based diabetes cure for 1995. Send your credit card right now. What struck me as fascinating is when asked directly about his involvement with this dubious medical scam, Mike Huckabee said, I don't have to account for everything I've done in my life. Well, no, Mike, that's how it goes. If you're running for president, you do have to account for your life. You do have to justify what you've done in your life. Now, sure, maybe when you were in grade school or high school long ago, Prat Falls can be forgotten as a young adult. But we're not talking about 30, 40, 50, or even 15 years ago. This is just in the last couple of years. Mike Huckabee sold himself out, rented himself as a pitch man for a diabetes cure involving cinnamon, which has absolutely no medical basis whatsoever, in fact. And Bob Schiefer, who has diabetes, called him on this. And the fact that Mike Huckabee just said, well, I don't have to defend everything I've done in my life. If it were that easy, everybody would run for president. Mike, I would run for president. So this struck me as one of the most bizarre and worse handlings of a crisis of a presidential candidate ever. And Mike Huckabee, I have to tell you, I give him a grade of a, a solid A. When it comes to his communication skills. He's a skilled communicator. He, he's articulate, he's usually warm and funny. But to just say he doesn't have to account for something, here's why it's legitimate. Again, this isn't something he did when he was 23 years old and struggling and just starting out. He was already rich from the book deals, speeches, TV gigs and radio gigs, all of which he got through fame from working in public service as a governor, as a presidential candidate. So Mike Huckabee's already rich and he's looking for even more ways of cashing in. So, yeah, it's entirely appropriate for Mike Huckabee to be asked questions about this from Bob Schieffer and others because it's about how did you leverage your fame, how did you use your time, how did you make money? And did you do it in a way that's fundamentally misleading people using your fame built from government office, misleading people in a way that could actually damage their health? I mean, if you're buying this product off the Internet or an infomercial rather than seeing a doctor, it could even kill you. So if something like this isn't fair game for the media to, I don't know, what is. Mike Huckabee, I'm afraid, has squandered his good name and is increasingly looking like he's going to be stuck as a lower tier, you know, a Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina type of candidate and not a real candidate. Now the shame for Huckabee supporters is if he had run in 2012, my prediction was that he would have won the nomination. I think he would have been far more acceptable to the party than Mitt Romney. But he didn't run in 2012. He was busy getting rich. And hey, nothing wrong with getting rich. But now it looks as though Mike Huckabee's time has passed and his political skills have atrophied. And when you simply say when caught red handed doing something sleazy, unethical, that you don't have to defend your life, it's time to go back to the talk show biz.
