EXCLUSIVE: Foreign Policy Experts Diagnose Mike Huckabee With A Bad Case Of ‘Localitis’

(Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)

Before offering a full-throated defense of Israel at the Jerusalem News Syndicate (JNS) Policy Summit in Jerusalem on Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee joked that he checked President Donald Trump’s Truth Social feed to make sure he hadn’t been fired.

“So today, before I got here, I did something that I thought was very important: I checked President Trump’s social media to make sure this wasn’t my last speech in Israel,” Huckabee told the audience. “As you know, he typically fires people in the middle of the night by way of social media, so I wanted to be sure there was a reason to be here.”

“I’m happy to report: so far, so good,” he added.

Huckabee’s joke comes at a time when the ambassador is facing renewed scrutiny over his relationship with his host country, as well as his public reactions to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Since President Donald Trump signed the MOU with Iran, thereby kicking off 60 days of peace negotiations, Huckabee has taken to social media to make his displeasure with the proceedings abundantly clear.

Whereas Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance zigged, lobbing some of the most pointed and public criticisms of an Israeli prime minister and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from a sitting POTUS or VP in the last 80 years, Huckabee zagged, doubling down on the “unbreakable bond” between the U.S. and the Jewish state as he openly counter-signaled against the MOU. (RELATED: Here Are The 3 Factions Slipping Poison Pills Into Trump’s Peace Process)

It was wonderful to speak at the 2026 @JNS_org International Policy Summit to reaffirm the unbreakable bond between America and Israel #JNS26 pic.twitter.com/KT4HIoqaO9

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@USAmbIsrael) June 21, 2026

Although the MOU calls for the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” Huckabee has continued expressing support for the IDF’s actions in Southern Lebanon. As both Trump and Vance are calling on the IDF to refrain from demolishing civilian homes, with Vance telling the Israelis, “You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem,” Huckabee is still framing the invasion and occupation as a “defense” of Israel’s border against Hezbollah.

Whether the Israelis ultimately withdraw their forces from Lebanon —”permanent termination of military operations”— will be crucial in determining the success or failure of a long-term peace deal between the U.S. and Iran.

Huckabee also defied Trump when he claimed that the U.S. would not exist without Israel.

“It is your heritage, without a doubt,” Huckabee said June 16 at the International Conference on Israeli Heritage. “But it is also the heritage of the United States. Without Israel, without the Jewish foundation, there would not be America. We owe our very existence to what happened in this land.”

Trump had said the opposite.

Peter Hahn, a distinguished professor of history at Ohio State University and a leading scholar of U.S. foreign policy and American diplomacy in the Middle East, told the Daily Caller that Huckabee’s social media posts are “unremarkable” because they are plain old signs of “localitis.”

Hahn defined this as “a tendency among diplomats assigned to foreign capitals to advocate for their host country over the competing interests of neighboring states or even the best interests of the USA.”

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee departs after a meeting with US President Donald Trump, Lebanon Ambassador to the US and Israel Ambassador to the US, at the White House in Washington, DC on April 23, 2026. US President Donald Trump met Lebanese and Israeli envoys at a new round of peace talks Thursday, with Beirut seeking a one-month extension of a shaky ceasefire set to expire. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)

“So common was this phenomenon,” Hahn said, “that the State Department routinely rotated careerists among different locations in part to safeguard against it in the extreme.”

Hahn noted that “a little localitis” is sometimes considered okay by an administration because it gives officials a different perspective before making a decision. He also said that in his own research on U.S. diplomatic history in the Middle East since the 1940s, he has found numerous examples of localitis, most of which were insignificant.

Huckabee’s case is different, though. He is airing his policy differences with the administration for the whole world to see.

“What might be notable about Huckabee is that he went public,” Hahn told the Caller. “Before the internet, localitis would be detected and discussed by State Department officials who read the ambassador’s confidential cables and reports sent home. In the social media age, diplomats speak their minds more freely and thus, localitis has become observable to the public in real time.”

Trita Parsi, vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also told the Daily Caller that Huckabee is afflicted with localitis and that, in his social media posts, the ambassador is “echoing a position that is much more identical to the Israeli government.”

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee (R) is shown a painting of Jerusalem during a visit to the Beit Hanassi presidential residence, in Jerusalem, on September 15, 2025. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a visit to Israel on September 15 that Washington would remain steadfast in its support for its ally in the Gaza war and called for the eradication of Hamas. (Photo by Nathan Howard / POOL / AFP) (Photo by NATHAN HOWARD/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

“It is always inappropriate and malpractice for a representative of a government in another country defying or contradicting what the policy of the government actually is, based on what the commander-in-chief has decided,” Parsi said. “This is a very clear case in which he is echoing a position that is much more identical to the Israeli government rather than to the position of the Trump administration.”

“Once policy was decided, as it is the case now, with an MOU being signed, and the president putting his weight behind it, then Mike Huckabee needs to get in line or get out,” he added. “At the end of the day, as an ambassador, you’re not setting policy. You’re implementing policy. You have a say in what that policy ends up being. But you’re not setting it.”

Walter L. Hixson, a retired University of Akron professor and historian who specializes in U.S.-Israel relations, told the Daily Caller that Huckabee “well represents fanatical evangelical support for Israel, which impedes realistic diplomacy.”

“Demanding a deal that provides total security for Israel, even as it promoted the war with Iran, conducts brutal cleansing operations in Gaza, the West Bank and the south of Lebanon, is not realistic diplomacy toward achieving a comprehensive peace,” he said. “With very few exceptions members of Congress from both parties also lack the courage to pursue a genuine peace agreement that would entail some restraint on the part of Israel as well as restraint on Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.”

In a statement to the Daily Caller, Huckabee denied having localitis, saying he has “faithfully” carried out U.S. policy.

JERUSALEM – AUGUST 18: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) listens to Ateret Cohanim spokesman Daniel Luria explain what the right-wing Israeli activist calls illegal Arab construction in the east Jerusalem village of Silwan during a tour of Jewish settlements in the crowded valley beneath the Old City August 18, 2008 in Jerusalem, Israel. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who was a Republican candidate in the 2008 United States presidential primaries, Jewish settlement sites in east Jerusalem to underscore what he says are the rights of Israel and the Jewish people to a united Holy City. (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)

“What a ridiculous charge. I serve one country — the United States. I have one client — President Trump. I was sent to carry out U.S. policy and faithfully do that. I do understand the nation I was sent to represent the U.S. to as a result of a 53-year history of traveling there and being immersed in the context,” the ambassador said. “It’s my job to represent U.S. policy to Israel and also to help U.S. policy makers and American citizens understand the importance of the partnership we have with Israel.”

“For the Daily Caller to question my patriotism or loyalty to the President or the U.S. sounds like the nonsense that one of its founders Tucker Carlson spews. They should be better,” he added.

This isn’t the first time Huckabee has drawn scrutiny over his relationship with Israel.

In February, Huckabee suggested to Tucker Carlson that Israel had a biblical right to annex parts of the Middle East. The exchange sparked a diplomatic row with dozens of Arab and Muslim countries, including U.S. allies Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which issued a joint formal statement condemning Huckabee’s “dangerous and inflammatory remarks.”

In July 2025, Huckabee held a secret meeting with Jonathan J. Pollard — a traitor to America who pleaded guilty to conducting espionage in 1986 — on U.S. soil at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Pollard claimed the meeting was “friendly” and that he was there to “thank” Huckabee, who in 2011 called for Pollard’s early release from prison to show the U.S. was “accelerating” its relationship with Israel.

Huckabee claimed the meeting was “personal” and “wasn’t done surreptitiously,” though press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time the White House was “not aware” of the meeting in advance. The New York Times reported that CIA officials were “alarmed” by the meeting, which broke a longstanding practice of U.S. officials avoiding any contact with convicted spies.

“Given the entire context, this should be the last straw,” Parsi told the Daily Caller when asked whether Huckabee’s recent behavior is enough to lose his job. “He should be fired.”