Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee Supports Josh Duggar

19 Kids and Counting reality television personality Josh Duggar and family have been at the center of a troubling scandal since the 27-year-old father of three admitted, in a statement to People magazine earlier this week, to molesting five underage girls during his teen years. On Friday, following public outcry, Discovery Communications, which owns TLC, confirmed that they were pulling all episodes of the reality show from the air. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee jumped into the controversy, posting a statement of support on his Facebook page for Duggar. "Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ‘inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable,'" Huckabee writes, before going on to praise Duggar for his honesty and deriding "those who have enjoyed revealing this long ago sins [sic]" as only "reveal[ing] their own insensitive bloodthirst."

The Duggar family actively campaigned for Huckabee in 2008, but Huckabee isn't the only political notable associated with the reality star and conservative activist. "The family has spent years campaigning for Republican presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial candidates," Politico reports; Duggar patriarch Jim Bob himself served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1999 to 2002 before making an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 2002. Mom Michelle made headlines herself in 2014, when she asked residents of Fayetteville, Arkansas to protest an anti-discrimination city ordinance, arguing that "males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls." (Fascinating.) But eldest son Josh has perhaps been the most politically visible of late, making the Republican rounds and sharing photos of himself posing with party heavyweights on Twitter. So far, only Huckabee has come out in support of his photo friend, but we'll be watching the story as it develops.