Mike Huckabee caught claiming Obama grew up in Kenya

Mike Huckabee claimed President Obama grew up in Kenya and therefore has 'very different' views about the world 'than the average American.' The only problem is Obama never grew up in Kenya. Did Huckabee plant the falsity purposely in preparation for 2012? What else did he say?

By Philip Elliott, Associated Press / March 2, 2011

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at the National Press Club in Washington. Huckabee was caught telling radio audiences, Monday, that President Barack Obama was brought up in Kenya, which caused him to be prejudice against Britain. The problem is that Obama never went to Kenya until he was in his 20s, which forced Huckabee's office to explain.

Alex Brandon/AP

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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee suggested in a radio interview that President Barack Obama's childhood in Kenya shaped his worldview – even though Obama did not visit Kenya until he was in his 20s.

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The potential Republican presidential candidate told New York radio station WOR on Monday that Obama's youth led him to resent the West, which he said explains why, in Huckabee's view, Obama's foreign policy differs so greatly from that of his predecessors.

"One thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, (is) very different than the average American," Huckabee said, pointing to Obama's decision in 2009 to remove a bust of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.

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He failed to note that Obama replaced the Oval Office fixture with a bust of one of his American heroes, President Abraham Lincoln, and moved the Churchill bust to the White House residence.

"The bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British," Huckabee said. "But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather. He probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather."

Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was detained in a 1952 uprising against British colonial rule in Kenya. Huckabee said childhood stories of the Mau Mau rebellion led President Obama to remove from the Oval Office the bust of Churchill, who ordered a crackdown against that uprising.

The executive director of Huckabee's political action committee said the former governor misspoke.

"When the governor mentioned he wanted to know more about the president, he wasn't talking about the president's place of birth – the governor believes the president was born in Hawaii," Hogan Gidley said. "The governor would, however, like to know more about where President Obama's liberal policies come from and what else the president plans to do to this country – as do most Americans."

Gidley said Huckabee meant to reference Obama's childhood in Indonesia, where he lived from the ages of 5 to 10. Gidley didn't explain the connection to the Mau Mau uprising.