Huckabee: Fight Russia, Assad another day, 'Islamic Jihad' our immediate threat

close

Video

VIDEO: Huckabee: Fight Russia

Heard on Fox

Mike Huckabee told viewers Friday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin are not America's biggest foes.

"Assad is not our immediate problem, Assad has not killed or kidnapped Americans," Huckabee, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said.

He said the more potent and pressing enemies of the US are radical Islamic groups, which have claimed responsibility for the Paris terror attacks and may have inspired the husband-and-wife team to perpetrate this week's violence in southern California.

"Our immediate threat is the Islamic Jihad, not only branches of ISIS and Al Qaeda and Boko Haram but those that are beheading Christians, infiltrating the United States and doing dastardly things like we saw in San Bernardino," he said.

"If the Russians and Putin are willing to go after ISIS members and kill them, we should not get in their way and in fact we should thank them for being willing to do that,"  the former Arkansas governor said.

Huckabee said the US should put aside its differences with Russia for another time, "We fight the battles that we have with them another day, on another platform."