Exclusive: Huckabee responds to report he called Fox News women 'trashy'

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Exclusive: Huckabee responds to 'trashy women' reports

Media reports claim former governor called Fox women 'trashy'

This is a rush transcript from "The Kelly File," January 28, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MEGYN KELLY, HOST: Governor Mike Huckabee left Fox News to consider a possible presidential race about a month ago, and he's been making news ever since.

Politico today getting lots of attention with a story about the governor, quoting him as complaining about how "trashy women" are at Fox News and how we curse too much. There's just one problem, he never actually said that. Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "MICKELSON IN THE MORNING," JAN. 23)

MIKE HUCKABEE, FORMER ARKANSAS GOVERNOR: In the Midwest there in Iowa you would not have people who would just throw the f-bomb and use gratuitous profanity in a professional setting.

UNKNOWN MALE: Right.

HUCKABEE: In New York, not only do the men do it but the women do it. This would be considered totally inappropriate to say these things in front of a woman. And for a woman to say them in a professional setting, we would only assume this is a very, as we would say in the South, that's just trashy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KELLY: Joining me now in a "Kelly File" exclusive, Governor Mike Huckabee, author of the brand new book "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy" which will debut at number three in the New York Times best seller list on February 8th.

And so, when I saw that quote about you allegedly taking a shot at trashy women who swear at the Fox News Channel according to Politico, of course I assumed you were referring to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE KELLY FILE," NOV. 11, 2014)

KELLY: Joining me now, Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who is the host of [bleep] -- of "Huckabee" here on Fox News Channel and he is also a former Republican presidential candidate.

Governor, good to see you…

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KELLY: So, as it turns out, you were not.

HUCKABEE: No, I wasn't. I mean, Megyn, you're the only one who's used that word in front of me at Fox like that.

KELLY: And millions of others.

HUCKABEE: You know, here's the interesting thing. This book has validated everything that I intended it to validate and the reaction to it from some of the elites.

KELLY: How so?

HUCKABEE: Well, here's the thing. The whole point is there's this cultural divide between people who live in the bubbles of New York, Washington and Hollywood, and people who live out here in the land of what I call "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy." So I write a chapter called "The Culture of Crude." It's not directed to any particular person, but to the general culture and how different it is. And the conversation that you played was an interview talking about it. Most of these people who criticize have never read it. And I never said anything about the women at Fox News, who are by the way lovely and delightful.

KELLY: Not trashy.

HUCKABEE: Everything I've said about Fox News in that book -- and there are several things I say in the book about Fox, and they're all lovely.

So here's the point. As many people hate the message of this book as hate Fox News, and Fox News speaks to the people and speaks for the people out here in the land of God, Guns, Grits and Gravy. I'm convinced, Megyn, one of the reasons there's so much venom pointed toward Fox is because Fox is the voice of and for a lot of the people out here in flyover country.

KELLY: Well, it's interesting because you said - you spoke of your disdain for women and men for that matter, but singled out women eventually for swearing in the workplace. You talked about your time in New York, your six and half years in New York and then so Politico ran with that headline, saying you were calling women at Fox News trashy, which was an assumption they made, but then later clarified it and corrected it. It doesn't say women at Fox News, it says women in New York if you go to that website. So is that an honest mistake?

HUCKABEE: No, it was not an honest mistake. It was an utterly fabricated lie on the part of the writer at Politico. There's no way you can even fabricate it unless he was just too lazy to read the chapter in the book that he was trying to talk about. And clearly, he had not read it because if he had read it he knew there was no way he could have drawn that conclusion. Let me give compliments to folks like The Daily Caller, who themselves did go read the chapter and called out Politico, thus they had to go back and correct their story, change their headline and realize they had really messed up.

(CROSSTALK)

KELLY: Do you think they saw an opportunity here? Because they want -- some want - not only would they love to take shots at Fox News and the ladies, but they want to paint you as sort of this anachronistic yesteryear culturally irrelevant guy.

HUCKABEE: Sure.

KELLY: And so this is an opportunity to highlight you, making a distinction between women and the men, we'll get to that in a minute. You know, your book you talked about how you longed for the days of Goldie Hawn doing her dancing and not so much Miley Cyrus -- but we pulled that video of Goldie Hawn I don't know if you're right about this -- anyway your thoughts on it?

HUCKABEE: I was a kid during that time. I know exactly what it was but it was -- a lot of things were suggestive, they weren't explicit. But what we have now is really a culture that is so explicitly crude and it's intentionally crude.

My point in the book is that a lot of people who live in their own bubbles do not see the culture the same way that people do in the land of "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy." That's the point. And whether it's related to firearms, whether it's related to the way we speak.

KELLY: I got it.

HUCKABEE: That's the point, Megyn.

KELLY: Well, I do have news for you before I let you go.

HUCKABEE: Yes.

KELLY: We are not only swearing, we're drinking, we're smoking, we're having premarital sex with birth control before we go to work and sometimes boss around a bunch of men.

(CROSSTALK)

KELLY: I got to leave it at that.

HUCKABEE: Oh, I just don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear that.

KELLY: Sorry. That's just the reality, Gov. We'll talk to you soon, thanks for being here.

HUCKABEE: Thanks.

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