Mike Huckabee has compared protesters who want to disrupt this week's Republican National Convention in Cleveland to howling predators always on the hunt for fresh meat.
"There are always people — their parents apparently didn't raise them, they were raised by wolves," Huckabee, a two-time presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor, told
Variety.
"They want to be disruptive, and that is unfortunate."
Huckabee, who supports Donald Trump, the party's presumptive presidential nominee, told the magazine he hopes the end result will be that "people realize that we have a real shot to bring people in the Republican Party who have never voted Republican before, and win the election."
Noting the incredibly tight security around the convention site in Cleveland, Huckabee said it may equal that of the 2012 GOP convention in Tampa, Florida.
"Tampa was over the top in so many ways. I thought it was like a gulag. And this may be every bit the same," he told Variety. "Sometimes it is really hard to fathom. It is a very well organized security operation. It has to be."
While protests are expected around the perimeter of Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena, it remains to be seen whether there will be any disruptions inside the hall as rumors continue to swirl that a third-party candidate could emerge to take on Trump.
The convention, which kicked off Monday morning, will host approximately 2,470 delegates and 2,302 alternate delegates from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories. It will also bring together some 15,000 credentialed media.
This year marks the fourth time the GOP has held its convention in the Buckeye State, the other years being 1876, 1924 and 1936.