Likely Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is calling out the media for their ignorance on guns, the world outside Washington’s Beltway and the reason he recently left his Fox News Channel show.
Kicking off his tour to promote his new book “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” Huckabee told Secrets that he finds the media “laughable” and sometimes playing the “idiot” role when covering America and his probable campaign.
Take his recent decision to leave Fox, which some in the media have suggested would free him up to sell books.
“I find it interesting when I read people speculating that the reason I left my Fox show is so I could boost book sales. I mean, what an idiot. I mean, my gosh, my book sales would be better if I was still at Fox,” he said, then explaining the reason.
“Why do you walk away from a wonderful opportunity I had there? It’s only if you are seriously contemplating and inching toward that decision [to run for president.] And if anybody can’t connect that, they really shouldn’t be writing at all, they should be coloring,” he said.
On guns, he writes of how he was interviewed by the Associated Press in his first, 2008, presidential bid and the topic came up. “One of the editors turned the conversation to gun control, saying matter-of-factly and with a certain tone of harrumph in her voice, ‘Well, surely, you agree that we ought to ban ‘semi automatic’ weapons because no one needs a semi automatic gun to go hunting.’”
He recalls first being stunned by the ignorance on how the guns work and who uses them, then explained to the reporter that he hunts ducks with his semi-auto shotgun and that the AR-15 shoots a cartridge that is less powerful than a typical deer load.
“That’s a laughable moment to people in circles I run in,” he told Secrets.
Huckabee seems to take pleasure in shaking up the mainstream media, and explains that it can sometimes help him make his point that the media and Washington ignore “bubbas” in what he terms “the flyover country” between the East and West Coasts, the so-called “bubbles.”
For example, he slapped Beyonce in his book and it made headlines. He said, “Those things certainly get attention, but it also provides a kind of clarity because it is in essence it’s a way to say, if I’m wrong about this cultural divide, tell me where this fits in in your community. And I think that’s where it becomes so real.”
Huckabee’s book goes on sale nationally on Tuesday.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
