CNN's April Ryan and Mike Huckabee in Twitter beef triggered by Mueller report

Onetime GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee clashed by tweet with CNN's April Ryan after she criticized his daughter, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on the heels of the Mueller report's release.

The controversy arose after Ryan called for Sanders' firing in light of the Special Counsel's claim, in his report on alleged Russian election meddling, that she'd misled the press. "The American people can't trust her," Ryan said. "She should be let go and she should be fired [...] When there is a lack of credibilty there you have to start and start lopping the heads off," she told CNN.

Huckabee appeared to take issue with Ryan's phrasing and, on Friday, called on the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) to revoke Ryan's press credentials.

"Will the ⁦@whca⁩ revoke April Ryan’s credentials? If not, they are gutless tools," he said, using the WHCA's Twitter handle. In another tweet, he said Ryan's words constituted an "incitement to murder."

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Ryan deployed some tweets of her own in response, assailing Huckabee's faith and accusing him of hypocrisy.

Ryan pointed to a joke Huckabee made when he was discussing a spat Ryan and his daughter had over Thanksgiving pie.

"Stuart, don’t ever and I mean don’t ever mess with a Southern woman and her homemade pies," he told Fox Business host Stuart Varney. "It is as dangerous as when you hear a Southern woman begin her sentence with ‘bless your heart.’ It means you’re about to be gutted like a deer, you just don’t know it.”

Ryan seemed to imply that comment carried a "veiled threat." "You call yourself a man of God? Boy bye!" she tweeted at Huckabee.

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"As your people come for me! My people see you and will do the same for you!" she tweeted.

At the time of publication, Huckabee had yet to respond.