Mike Huckabee Should Resign
The Milstein scandal shows the ambassador undercutting
American policy and the express wishes of the president.
Jason Jones
Oct 10, 2026
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/mike-huckabee-must-resign/
The New York Times reports that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s senior
adviser, David Milstein, suppressed an embassy report and obstructed efforts by
our elected representatives in Congress to obtain information. That in itself
is a scandal—but it’s the gravity of the information in question that makes
this story rise to the level of demanding immediate and formal accountability
to American citizens.
In March, U.S. senators wrote to Huckabee demanding answers about American citizens killed in
the West Bank since January 2022. Among them were the journalist Shireen Abu
Akleh and Amer Rabee, who was just 14 years old. The senators said no one had
been held accountable.
This cannot stand. These bereaved families cannot be
asked to accept an embassy accused of actively working against their interests
in order to protect the reputation of a foreign government whose soldiers and
settlers killed their loved ones. And as their fellow Americans, none of the
rest of us will accept it either.
No, Mike Huckabee must resign. And if he refuses,
President Donald Trump must remove him from office.
The Times report cites 15 U.S. officials and
dozens of documents, collectively pointing to a sustained effort to sanitize
reporting about the government of the corrupt and unpopular Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The conspiracy went on despite officials elsewhere in
the Trump administration—including the president himself—expressing opposition
to Netanyahu’s increasingly radical actions. Milstein allegedly blocked a
warning that settlement expansion could violate Trump’s opposition to West Bank
annexation. Reporting on Israeli inaction against settler violence was at one
point replaced with a propagandistic cable praising a crackdown.
This is much more than office politics. These are
matters of life and death. When Washington receives a false picture of
violence, the people enduring it lose another chance of protection in a region
where time is now of the essence. Whether whole communities will remain in the
land where they have lived for centuries can depend on their interests being
accurately relayed to the rest of the world. Some of those communities are the
ancient Christian towns of the Holy Land, where they have worshiped since the
time of Christ’s ministry there.
But thanks to the corruption and double-dealing of
Huckabee’s office, when our elected representatives asked about dead American
citizens, we were denied a full accounting. Even more concretely: That means
families lost access to justice—and to the rights afforded to us all as
American citizens.
Huckabee denies the allegations, of course, expecting
far more sympathy than he has any right to expect. While he claims to have no
knowledge of the scandal, officials who spoke to the Times described
instances when he helped suppress or recast reporting and others when he
restrained Milstein—which, far from exonerating the ambassador, only suggests
to me that he was that much more familiar with his aide’s mischief.
And “mischief” is hardly the word for some of the
downright sinister actions now being revealed to the public. Responsible Statecraft reported
last year that an embassy
cable warning of looming famine in Gaza never reached Washington; Milstein
instead sent favorable reporting about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Consider what that means for a hungry child: His suffering can become invisible
to the very officials with the power to intervene.
Milstein, the stepson of neoconservative talk show
host Mark Levin, also circulated a wedding
invitation seeking cash gifts from a guest list including Israelis. Huckabee’s very
mature response to the scrutiny included calling the reporting outlet,
POLITICO, “Politicrap.” An ambassador entrusted with American lives should be
capable of answering serious questions with the seriousness they deserve.
Perhaps if this were the first mark against Huckabee’s
character and competence, I would be writing a different column. But there have
been many red flags—failures of judgment that extend far beyond Milstein.
In July 2025, Huckabee hosted the infamous convicted
traitor and Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Pollard had served 30 years for his misdeeds. The White House said it had no advance
knowledge of the secret
meeting. Huckabee later said he personally approved it. An ambassador willing to receive a man who
betrayed American intelligence should show at least as much solicitude for the
families of Americans killed abroad.
He also regularly lashes out at those—including
foreign dignitaries—who oppose Israeli policies. And not just any Israeli
policies, but the most contentious Israeli actions of all, including its
internationally condemned backing of illegal settlements in the West Bank.
When Irish officials considered restricting trade with
Israeli settlements, Huckabee reached for a drunken-Irish stereotype, asked whether they
had fallen into a vat of Guinness, and ordered: “Sober up Ireland!” He wanted
Ireland to apologize to Israel. American diplomacy had become a vehicle for
abusing another country on the settlement movement’s behalf.
Then came his February interview with Tucker
Carlson. Asked about a
biblical entitlement extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing
enormous stretches of neighboring Arab countries, Huckabee said: “It would be
fine if they took it all.”
The remark drew a torrent of condemnations from
throughout the Arab world, amounting to a serious international diplomatic
incident. But Huckabee shrugged it off.
I called for Huckabee’s recall then. The case has only grown stronger.
His posture cannot be excused as loyalty to the
administration. Trump has explicitly opposed West
Bank annexation, and Vance has reiterated that policy in
Israel. An embassy that
withholds warnings about violations of that position would be obstructing the
president it supposedly serves—to say nothing of the will of the American
people, which has increasingly soured on the brutal Netanyahu regime.
The United States needs an ambassador whose concern
for Israeli security does not extinguish his concern for everyone else.
Huckabee’s tenure has become an obstacle to his own office’s duties. He should
go, all records should be preserved, and every allegation should be
independently investigated.
The families of nine Palestinian-Americans have
already lost someone they love. Neither they nor the rest of us should be asked
to sacrifice the truth as well. In order to reassure Americans that our
citizenship means something to our government, and that our rights will not be
compromised if they run up against the interests of a foreign government,
Huckabee must no longer hold any power over the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
