Mike Huckabee: The Reporter Made Me Say Those Things About Gay Marriage And Adoption
Reported by Ellen - May 3, 2010 -
Sean Hannity gave Mike Huckabee a solid dose of Fox News Republican Rehab Friday night (4/30/10) over his controversial remarks about gay marriage and gay adoption. Huckabee came under fire for statements he made in an interview comparing gay marriage to accommodating drug abuse and opposing gay adoption by saying that “children are not puppies.” In the wake of those comments, Huckabee was interviewed by Rosie O’Donnell in a discussion that, according to Hannity, was sometimes contentious. The Hannity show highlighted the O’Donnell interview but conveniently left out Huckabee’s original statements. Instead of walking back his comments or admitting that perhaps his choice of words may not have been ideal or even explaining how his words had been twisted, Huckabee attacked the “activist” reporter who, according to Huckabee, had not “really depict(ed) what I was.” With video.
Hannity introduced the segment by saying, “Our very own Mike Huckabee visited Rosie O’Donnell on her radio show recently and things got pretty contentious when they touched on the subject of gay adoption.” It wasn’t until later in the conversation that Hannity acknowledged the story really began before Huckabee appeared with O’Donnell.
Huckabee said that his discussion with O’Donnell was respectful and civil. But, presumably comparing himself to Jesus, Huckabee told Hannity, “There is this understanding that if you’re a Christian, then you’re supposed to believe that Jesus just says, ‘Hey, whatever you want to do is OK.’ People forget Jesus was very divisive. Jesus caused people to have to make real tough decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong… He did make people mad.”
Would Jesus have tried to blame the media for making people mad? Rather than address what had really caused the controversy and clarifying what he had meant or had not meant to say, Huckabee said that he gave the “puppies” interview to what he thought were college journalists. But, according to Huckabee, “One of ‘em was actually more of an activist than a journalist.” Huckabee said, “He obviously didn’t like the answer so he would then start a debate and I would try to explain to him and give him a little bit more of an understanding of, logically, why I held the positions I did. So he took that, wrote a story. It got picked up by a lot of the blogs that support same sex marriage. Then the mainstream media picked up on it. They blew it up all over the place. Rosie got it from that.”
Huckabee claimed that gay adoption is not “high on my priority list to talk about… Rather than try new ways to create a family, we ought to work on the one that God gave us.” Hannity, at the ready for rehab, had footage of that same reporter getting arrested at an Ann Coulter speech.
“We’re living in a day when the mainstream media can take a story and manipulate it, can distort it. This young man released an edited version of the interview – wasn’t really depicting what I was,” Huckabee said. He never said he had been misquoted or how, exactly he had been wrongly depicted. Hannity didn't ask, either.
Huckabee went on to dubiously claim that he has the same opinion on same-sex marriage as Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and “the voters in 30 states where it’s been on the ballot.” But I highly doubt that either Biden, Obama or Clinton ever compared gay marriage to drug abuse.
