UPDATED: Huckabee Lies Again (And Again): His Book Doesn't Support His "Page 183" Defense
March 03, 2011 10:15 am ET by Ben Dimiero & Eric Hananoki
On Monday, Mike Huckabee twice claimed that President Obama grew up "in Kenya." Huckabee has used this falsehood to buttress a theory about Obama's supposed antipathy towards the British resulting from the Mau Mau rebellion.
In the wake of the resulting media firestorm over his comments, Huckabee has played the victim and implausibly claimed that he "misspoke" and that his comments were a "simple slip of the tongue."
On The O'Reilly Factor last night, Huckabee again defended his remarks, saying that "if I'd read from my own text, page 183 of my book, I clearly said he grew up in Indonesia. It was a verbal gaffe. I immediately apologized. But that's not enough for the left-wing media."
One big problem: that's not true.
On page 183 of his book, Huckabee references the Churchill bust and the Mau Mau rebellion, but does not say that Obama grew up in Indonesia. In fact, neither that page (nor the rest of the chapter) references Obama's childhood in Indonesia. And based on a search of the Kindle version of his book, Huckabee makes no mention of Indonesia (or Indonesian, Jakarta, and Menteng).
Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler wrote in a post yesterday that Huckabee's "misspoke" defense actually raises more questions. Kessler further reported in an update:
Huckabee's spokesman points out that the governor discusses the Winston Churchill incident on page 183 in his new book, "A Simple Government." Huckabee writes that "our wartime partnership with Winston Churchill and the British people is part of our story; the Mau Mau rebellion is not." He accuses Obama of emphasizing "his story rather than history." We are still waiting for a fuller explanation.
UPDATE:
Huckabee repeated the above lie in an interview that aired on today's Mike Gallagher Show. Huckabee also dismissed Media Matters as "Media Doesn't Matter": :
GALLAGHER: Walk us through the week you had after seeing that you were being painted as one of these birthers who questions where Barack Obama grew up and all of that. Tell us about the week you had, and the way it was reported on by MSNBC and other outlets.
HUCKABEE: Well Mike, the irony is that I've been one of the people who has consistently said that I did not think he was born outside the U.S. I did not think he's a Muslim. I've said openly, and clearly, much to the chagrin of fellow conservatives, that I believe he is an American citizen, and I believe he is a Christian, albeit sliced a different -- a little differently than me.
Then I wrote this in my book, page one -- when this controversy erupted was - Mike you've done book tours, you know the drill. You do, sometimes, thirty, forty, interviews in a day. You talk to dozens of reporters. You're doing book signing after book signing. Now, I'm not making excuses. I made a verbal gaffe. Here's what I did. I was quoting, actually, from page 183 of my book, A Simple Government. In that chapter, I talk about that Barack Obama has a different sort of perspective because of his unique background.
Now, look, all of us have a perspective based on who we are. I have a perspective having grown up in Hope, Arkansas, the son of a fireman. That has marked me, and given me a different perspective than someone who grew up in Manhattan.
So what I said was, that as a kid - and here was my gaffe. And it was my mistake and I corrected it immediately when I realized I said it. I said as a kid who grew up in Kenya, and I meant Indonesia, which is spelled out clearly in my book, word for word, but I did mention that his father and his grandfather were Kenyan. And I quoted directly. This was not so much my words - these were not my words. This was a direct quote from a British newspaper in which I spoke of how when he returned the bust of Winston Churchill back to the Brits, it was a big insult to them. But I said that given his father and grandfather's Kenyan history, it is not surprising that he would have had a different perspective about the Mau Mau revolution than, let's say, I would have, you would have, or someone maybe in Great Britain.
GALLAGHER: Correct.
HUCKABEE: And all of that - again, if these guys from the New York Times and the Associated Press - I don't expect this out of Salon or HuffPo, because you know what they're going to do. Or Media Matters, which is like Media Doesn't Matter. But the legitimate news organizations, all they had to do - and by the way, Mike, we gave them a free book so they can't say well they couldn't afford one. And I realize profits are down at the New York Times as they should be, but we gave them a free book. They could open it up and read it.
Media Matters is still trying to teach Fox News to play the right Video Feed.
Palm Trees in the Back-Ground as you complain about Violence from Unions in Wisconsin?
Billo the Clown, The Walt Disney of Cable News "Edit, Edit & Snip, Snip" in the Zone of no Spin.
Speak truth to power.
Mr. News
Is this the Song Mike Huckabee Sings on Fox as he also gets paid?
A Madrassa? That's code for "Black" Mike, but you already knew that.
Solidify your Right-Base Homie, "Keep it Real", "WHITE POWER", it's only Compassion you Lack.
Speak truth to power.
Mr. News
It's a code word for Muslim.
What would make Huckabee think he could make such a claim on TV and not expect people to check it out for themselves?
Lying is not just a favorite past-time, NO,lying has become a way of life with Republicans.
Fox News is more than willing to accommodate these lying hypocrite.
Those days are gone. Right now, with the willing aid of Fox news and the complacency of the sanitized mainstream corporate press, not only can these right wingers make the most absurd claims, but they know the media will not fight them on corrections.
How correct you are.
Huck has to pay for his new florida mortgage! The racists comments are designed to keep the FEAR OF OTHER in the front lobe of the uninformed!!!
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The Midnight Review
He's a conservative, so he is always lying, he is a christian, so he is a liar, he is a minister so he is dirty liar. Put all of those together and that makes him a dirty lying liar. Add in the fact that he works for FOX and hes a scoundrel with a captive, ignorant base. He can lie and can continue to lie and will continue to get away with it, heck his lies might even help get elected. The sad fact is that kids are not equipped to do research unless they go to college. Even then, only certain undergrad programs require any real research. The even sadder fact is that most Americans don't go to college. "Research" for most people is a quick Google, or Wikipedia search. Those are both so dubious that when I was in college we practically had to write a second paper in defense of our use of either of them, and still usually lost points, and my students get an automatic 0 on the paper if I see either of those listed in a bibliography.
There will be more lies and excuses to cover the lies and the conservatives will defend every word of it and attack us for pointing it out. This litany of lies isn't over, I think it hasn't even started yet, and it isn't going anywhere good, you can believe that.
I doubt Foxbots really know what peer reviewed means.
Frankly, from a person who's studied history, the U.S. is at a tipping point. If you look back to the ancient Chinese dynasties, Rome, and some African nations like the Songhai, you can compare them to us. In each case, after the nation peaked, as we have done so, we're now in a decline like they went into. If you look at each of these, you'd see that when each nation started to decline, education was kicked, or restricted to certain groups of people. The poor among those nations sank deeper and deeper into poverty, as the rich gained more wealth as they were able to take advantage of the poor and give out lower and lower wages. Also, politics became hostile, lies and slander were common, and it wasn't uncommon to pin the blame of an issue or situation onto a person or group. That is what is happening right now. We can stop this decline, but the problem is that it takes a lot of effort to do so. More effort then the conservative base wants to put out, much less even admit that we as a nation are in a decline.
America didn't become strong because God "favored" us, it was because Americans made this nation strong. If we are to remain a strong nation, we have to put aside our differences and work together. And the only group I've seen to even remotely try to do that, would be the Democrats, though a few of them seem to have taken a hard line as well (which in some cases, like in WI, is understandable).
In the end, whether this nation continues to be as it is, depends upon the people. And with as much misinformation and lies coming from the conservative side with their extreme nationalism, I worry about the future.
Truly, I am shocked to hear this!
:-)
Yes, all that may be true and reasonable and make sense, but there is an opportunity to take something mundane and noncontroversial, and distort and twist and spin it into a blatantly false and racially charged attack against a democratic president.
Amazing how much illegal and unethical crap this crowd puts up with from their own while they go to such great lengths to create these bizarro smears of liberals and democrats.
Hypocracy once again. We cry shame about torture but have no qualms about water boarding.
If anything, Obama is being consistant.
Your text to link here...
This is so absurd on its face that it really doesn't deserve a response. Unfortunately, almost half of Americans are stupid enough to believe it.
Basically a way of saying exactly what Glenn Beck said outright in 2009, but phrased in a way so they can deny ever calling Obama an anti-American racist who hates white people and white culture
Corrected version:
"a difference between black anti-colonialism and white anti-colonialism"
This is one of my favorites because they will demand we return things...to the way they were years ago. Remember, when we mention it happend under Bush, they dont *disagree*. They jsut say we have to worry about *now*.
If this is the case, why on earth would they go back to the stuff in Bush's reign? They admit that it made things bad.
I especially enjoy the part where he proclaims "the Daily Telegraph explained Obama's strange behavior," as if that must be the one definitive account.
Who could stomach an entire book written like this?
People will read this (awful) page/book, and take away from it the "fact" that a) the English were offended (of course there's no evidence of this) and b) the bust was returned because of Churchill's history with Obama's grandfather.
All because one right-wing English newspaper said so. Couldn't Huckabee or his editor go just a little bit deeper into the matter?
Hmmm...kinda like Fox news?
Thanx again for putting the truth on here for everyone to see and understand.
The debt our nation owes all of you here on MMFA is incalculable.
And what is the giant elephant in the room? What is the big evidence that they have of his "anti-colonial" behavior towards one of our allies? He returned a piece of sculpture!
*** GASP AND SWOON! ***
There are layers of lies and misinformation in this new and truly bizarre attack on the President.
Oh, and -10 Points for them using the rote-memorized non-apology-apology ("Im sorry people got offended...").
He is going the way of John McCain unfortunately in letting these hacks drag a once respectable man into the arena of Karl Rove style political filth.
His background and credentials should be enough to win his base over. If a southern minister, former republican governor, and Fox news host isn't far enough to the right for the tea party crazies, I shudder to think what kind of insane policy they will demand if he gets elected.
John McCain MIGHT be trying to work out some of his resentment of himself for unleashing the monster that is Sarah Palin onto our world, if he is reasonable.
What I've also read is that it was loaned to Bush, and as such, normally would have gone back to Great Britain after Bush left office. Given that fact, Obama not only has it the statue in his home, but he purposely kept the statue, so that shows us that he's not dissing England!
This latest defense is incredibly lame.
The issue isn't Barack Obama's upbringing. The issue is Mike Huckabee's obnoxious public decorum.
And this guy is a Minister.
Maybe I don't write so good as I hear and see this:
I'd like to see Huckabee come out of hiding in the FUX News blast-hardened bunker, to campaign for votes by speaking in public ... with soldiers in the crowd freshly returned home carrying weapons they themselves paid for overseas at the hate-frothing TV LIARS War stealing Oil.
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I should have added that Huckabee can hold high 'Page 183' to shield himself from any mob
... I mean, crowd.
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To lie and think that no one would fact check him is dishonest and not too bright.
You keep violating some of The Ten Commandmants:
You shall not bear false witness. (Lying about President Obama is doing just that. Chris Matthews obviously reads comments on Media Matters since he brought up my point registered yesterday about this.)
Thou shalt not kill (but you probably redefine it as so many American Christians and Christians in other nations do, and say "murder," which allows you to kill and to say that Julian Assange should be assassinated)
Have you violated any other commandments, Michael?
By the way, Mr. Huckster, I am a CONSERVATIVE journalist and editor. Excuse my English, but I ain't no liberal media apparatchik, or am I a Republican and/or Tea Party stooge.
Listen, fatboy, are you becoming a serial liar, or have you always been this way?
Signed: a conservative journalist who now fears the conservative media bias more than the "liberal media bias."
Signed: a liberal former journalist who fears a corporatacracy.
Another zombie lie debunked.
I'll say one thing, if Huckabee's tongue is so slippery that it causes him to say what he said in that interview on Monday, his wife has gotta be really, really happy.
Making things worse is this insane meme from the beltway bobbleheads that "...being a man of the cloth, I don't think Huckabee was lying..."
What?
Yeah, 'cause we've never, ever heard of religious leaders who were "bearing false witness."
</snark>
Uh-huh just like Palin who manages to churn out 1-2 a year! Get real.
(That't right, the LIBRUL media is really owned by right wing corporations and they want to keep the dialog going their way?
UGH!
I will not sink so low as to claim the only buyers will be the ones who want to prove him wrong. After all, the proof is already posted on this page.
I do believe most of Huck's followers actually can read.
Yep Mike is right. Obama doesn't bear false witness against anyone in order to elevate himself. Too bad preacher Mike can't say the same thing. I guess it would be appropriate to say they are cut from different cloths too. Mike was cut from the cloth of a Pharisee (sp?).
You people are more pathetic by the day as one cable station is destroying the major networks and those knuckle-dragging mouth breathers on PMSNBC.
You should be ashamed of yourselves for all your pathetic lies, hate, racism, bigotry and fearmongering. But when you decide an incompetent community organizer who's only qualification is dithering should try and play with the big boys, this is what our great nation ends up like.
Go ahead, read your media matters propaganda sponsored by the criminal George Soros and live with your heads in the sand. Just don't bother the Conservatives and TEA Party that now have to clean your mess up from 4 years of fraud, lies, extortion and corruption.
Huccabee told another LIE. One he told to cover up a different LIE. I know you hate it when we point out how much the rightwing LIES, but try to get over it since we are going to CONTINUE to point out your constant lying. GOD but you are stupid and pathetic
I have not seen cons or teabaggers clean up ANYTHING! Cons for the last ten years have screwed this country royally! Check out any statistics about what has happened to the economy, terrorism, lives lost, poor and middle class citizens, infrastructure and on and on. And the baggers are pretty much, "lets go back to the days of dirt roads and no electricity for everyone but ME!" From where I sit, the worst lies come from the hate-wing, and faux! AND RATINGS DO NOT EQUAL RIGHT OR TRUTH! (Pravda is a great example!)
You know what it does prove momo?
That FOX is part of the Main Stream Media that you wacko's like to claim has a liberal bias.
Obama can't win with the RIPublicans, no matter what he does.
He wasn't painted as a "birther". That's a strawman argument. He was accurately described as someone who was clueless about how Obama was raised and what he was exposed to! He believes the lies that the likes of Jerome Corsi has pushed. He wasn't that he questioned where Obama was born. It's that he clearly didn't know where he was raised - his comments showed us that he thought that he was influenced by a dad and granddad who lived in Kenya, but Obama wasn't influenced by them.
Obama respected Lincoln and of course they are from the same state sp it makes sense that he would acknowledge that.If that caused controversy on his Americanism what chance does he have with these people?Its obvious that bigotry,racism and hypocrisy abound with those attacking the President on personal issues like patriotism and religion.Now when was GW Bush or even Clinton attacked relentlessly on these 2 issues in their 1st 2 years?The divorced Ronald Reagan sure wasn't and he didn't even go to church very much either.
What if he had swapped the Churchill bust for one of Nelson Mandela ...make the tongues really wag with even more stupidity!
Why do we keep putting people like Huckabee,Gingrich ,Palin and Bachman in prominent positions to show the world how bigoted and hypocritical America can be!!Hard to lecture the rest of the world when the 1st black president is attacked this way with absolutely no evidence to backit up,just Dinesh D'Souza's outrageous book and HE wasn't even born in America!!Pathetic!!!
I actually used to like the guy back when he was running.
I thought he was a honest, God fearing man with a moderate view.
Sadly, that all changed when he got his own TV show and now his cozy relationship with Faux News. Now he's just as big a liar and sell-out to the extreme right as anybody could find!
I mumble curses under my breath eveytime I see that commercial with him asking people to sign a petition against the healthcare reform bill!
It's always fun to see the true tipping point when a repub that thought he really had a shot at the White House finally goes all in on the "Pander Wagon(TM)" just to make a buck.
I truly despise these wastes of carbon and water.
O'Reilly and Huckabee apparently thought that Fox's viewers would forget they just told us Mr. Obama had no contact with his father or grandfather growing up.