Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee — a candidate for the Republican Party presidential nomination in both 2008 and 2016 — took a swipe at political foe Joe Biden and struck his longtime rival on the GOP side in the process.
Commenting on the resurgent news, first reported in 2021, that Biden used three aliases (Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware) for separate email accounts while Vice President, Huckabee slammed the POTUS and his own former rival, Utah Senator Mitt Romney, writing: “Joe probably learned to do this from his soulmate Pierre Delecto!”
Pierre Delecto was an alias Romney used on Twitter, for an anonymous account his son Matt set up for him in 2011. Romney said he used the alias “simply to listen and to hear what was going on.”
Joe probably learned to do this from his soulmate Pierre Delecto! https://t.co/k2kbOsRIPu
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) August 17, 2023
Huckabee, who is supporting former President Donald Trump in 2024, needed little encouragement to disparage Romney — a frequent target of MAGA Republicans — for being a role model for Biden when it comes to email shenanigans. (Romney is facing abundant challenges from within his own party, as a recent Wall Street Journal story illuminates.)
During the 2008 Republican presidential primary, Huckabee and Romney severely criticized each other as flip-floppers. Ed Rollins, a national GOP strategist who ran Huckabee’s 2008 effort, said the former Arkansas governor felt “personal animosity” for Romney. The two have been referred to as “lasting enemies” ever since.
Huckabee won the 2008 Iowa Republican caucuses and finished second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won, behind John McCain and Romney, both of whom ran against and lost to Barack Obama, (McCain in 2008, Romney in 2012).
[Note: Huckabee didn’t do as well when he ran again for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election; he withdrew early in the primary after a disappointing finish in the Iowa caucus, where candidate Ted Cruz defeated Trump by one delegate (Cruz, 8, Trump, 7).]
In 2020, Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, making him the first senator ever to have voted to remove a president of the same party from office.
