Beyond Trig Palin birth certificate, new troubles for Sarah Palin:
My overall summary is that Sarah is Trig's mom. But, that Todd Palin is not necessarily Trig's father. (And, per Joe McGinness, yes, Palin having an affair that resulted in pregnancy would surprise me not one bit.) That is why she couldn't risk giving birth in Texas, or even in Anchorage, if there's any way to "explain" her rushed flight back home where her water broke. And, yes, First Dude Todd was flying with her. And, he may have known he had been cuckolded. But he was First Dude, not some "fish packer from I'll Ask Ya," so what was he going to do at that point? File for divorce like now?
New update, Sept. 9, 2019: I posted this on Twitter after news of Sarah and Todd
filing to get divorced, a potential divorce that was first rumored a decade ago. To be more clear on some things, I've done some strikethroughs on musings from the past, pre-2017 and well, pre-2011, that I had later rejected. Namely, that's most of what Andrew Sullivan, for whatever reasons, was claiming based on a non-source "source" who turned out to have low-level credibility.
Anyway, I still don't think Todd is Trig's dad. So, who is? Maybe Todd will tell, now that they're divorced? Could come out in child support issues, right? Speaking of, you can hit (or see after it's expired)
this Twitter poll.
I do know that
two years later, in the middle of ongoing controversy, Mat-Su Regional, Palin's hospital of birth, still had not made a birth certificate public, nor had Palin. I do know that SEVEN years later, in 2015, even as Palin doubled down on birtherism over Obama's birth certificate, she still
refused to produce one for Trig.
Anyway, that's just another way in which Ms. Family Values, the Quitter with a Twitter, is a massive hypocrite. She earns every bit of kicking she gets.
Apologies for some links being dead. This was a decade ago; on this issue, I have personal reason to lament link rot.
One final note: Wingnut Robert Stacy McCain, the so-called "other McCain," said he knew who Audrey of Palin's Deception, really Anne Briggs was,
and it played out. That was the final nail in the fake pregnancy coffin, though I was already moving away from it.
BUT ... the other Schmuck Talk Express refused to deal with the actual issues. And, I called him out by email yesterday, since he's been banned from Twitter not once but twice. That said, here's why he was banned from Twitter twice —
a men's rights activist bigot attack dog and more.
Update and final wrap (before the special update), May 8, 2017: Please read all of my later writings about both Sarah Palin and Trig Palin, as well as the Palin's Deception blog. Stuff with strike-throughs is fake pregnancy stuff by "Audrey," aka Anne Briggs, that I've rejected.
Update, Aug 1, 2009: Is a rumored Sarah-Todd Palin separation or divorce
connected to Trig Palin pregnancy and birth issues?
Update, July 3-6, 2009: Head
here for my comments on Palin’s resignation announcement.
And, for further speculation on WHY she’s resigning,
head here.
The REAL real reason for Palin’s resignation?
It’s all
right here.
MSM political commentary doyenne Anne Applebaum
goes a bit postal on Palin.
Douthat gets the resignation
half right, especially on the political fallout, but not so much on the “poor, persecuted Palin” angle.
A big Washington Post “wrap” story
has a few errors.
And,
yet more strangeness from The Quitter with a Twitter.
Meanwhile, for the best refutation of the “Sarah is not Trigg’s mom” nuttery that I long-ago abandoned, held only by people who are cultists of the Palin’s Deception blog, visit
Celtic Diva.
And, in "
The Rogue," Joe McGinniss offers up a new "crazy like a wingnut" angle: Palin adopted Trig, knowing she was a Down's syndrome baby, so Sarah could be a poster child for the pro-life movement. She had to fly from Dallas back to Mat-Su Regional Hospital in such a hurry because the adoption finalized earlier than she expected. Hey, it's as believable as what Sarah claims.
New links back up the evidence McCain campaign op Steve Schmidt can't deny
Update Dec. 5: Sully refutes Michelle Malkin calling this tin-foil hat territory, and says he talked to
how likely/unlikely Sarah Palin's story was. You know the answer, but, they were polite about their "unlikely" comments.
He also notes, as noted here months ago, that Mat-Su Regional has
no record of Trig Palin being born there on the date in question. Period.
Beyond providing a birth certificate, or offering some logical explanation for why Palin hasn't, the real tin-foil hatters, the one for whom Ms. Sarah is the female Messiah, need to explain why the hospital where Trig Palin was allegedly born has no record of the event.
Update Nov. 24: Palin Deception shows that pics from Bristol's prom may be from a previously unmentioned possible fourth prom date and so do NOT prove she is not Trig's mom.
Update Nov. 12: Sully tells us why
Palin still matters:
Forty-six percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural "identity". Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again. And we have to find a way to prevent this from recurring.
Because of that, because he notes Palin still has “no self-awareness,” and because he says the MSM abdicated responsibility on Palin, he promises to “stay on the case.”
Update, Nov. 11: Palin Deception scrutinizes Mercedes Johnston's MySpace pix and concludes they were shot at Palin's house and not a birthing room in Mat-Su. Audrey says that, beyond that, they aren't really evidence for or against either Bristol or Sarah as Trig's mom; readers speculate a third possibility, that Mercedes is the mom via Sarah's son and Bristol's brother, Track, or that the baby was adopted from Mercedes and Levi's mom.
And, both Audrey and Sully point out that allegedly-pregnant (again?) Bristol should be at the eight-month mark; will we see anything at Mat-Su's website in a month? Two months? At all?
Update, Nov. 4:Andrew Sullivan has a strong narrative questioning
Palin's medical nonchalance.
Boosted from comments: The Palin Deception, an excellent website created by a reported lifelong (until now) Republican.
It’s an excellent roundup of photos that largely refute the pregnancy claims, along with a variety of verbal red flags from interviews she did in the last months before somebody gave birth and more.
A Yahoo Geocities website is also serving as a clearing house on this issue.
Per this photo from the National Governors’ Association, when Palin (front row, second from left) would theoretically have been about seven months pregnant, she sure doesn’t look pregnant.
(For a high-res version, go to the National Association of Governors’ photo page scroll down about three-quarters of the way, and click the link.
First, if top McCain campaign op Steve Schmidt is
publicly bitching about Trig Palin paternity questions to the point of breaking alleged off-the-record media conversations (and further damaging his boss’s free ride with the media in the process, this story has legs.
Long legs.
Here’s
more Schmidt bitching, via Howie Kurtz, where he complains the campaign is “under siege.”
Here’s Howie’s nutgraf, buried in the middle of webpage 2:
News organizations routinely ask questions about allegations in an attempt to determine their veracity, and Schmidt did not contend that they were publishing or broadcasting false information about Palin and her family.
So, Schmidt isn’t denying at least the possibility of truth behind the rumors, just trying to quash the questioning.
Politically speaking, as I note in my roundup of Day 4 of
the Palin follies, Palin herself is gun-shy about this issue. But, since B.O. is running Post-Partisan Politics™, someone outside the Democratic establishment will have to keep pushing the political leverage of this issue.
Second, the biggest piece of empirical evidence so far on Trig’s date and place of birth, and therefore on his parentage, is
evidence of absence, or absence of evidence. Here’s the webpage of
Mat-Su Regional Medical Center births, for April 18, 2008. See who’s NOT listed? Oh, and in case something was wrong on the date? No births at all are shown for either April 17 or April 19.
This is 2008. If the state of Alaska doesn’t itself have electronic copies of birth certificates available as PDFs, it would take a Palin staffer about 2 minutes to make one.
And, in either case, 30 seconds to upload to the Palin campaign website.
We would take a look, assess the genuineness of what was purported to be the Trig Palin birth certificate and go from there.
It’s as simple as that, Gov. Palin. And John McCain. And Steve Schmidt.
Finally, the “motive” question.
As I mentioned in my first post on this subject, I believe that Sarah Palin was trying to protect her Good Mommyhood Seal of Approval™ from the Religious Right, as much as protect her daughter’s image, if she is passing Trig off as her son when he’s not.
Also, I disagree with
Josh Marshall’s contention that Schmidt is spinning this as political smokescreen to divert attention away from Troopergate and other areas of Palin incompetence or ethical shortcomings.
He may have latched onto it for that purpose, but it still has a life beyond that.
Beyond that, it’s a shorthand for how Palin’s camp, and McCain’s honchos, can’t provide straightforward information to the most simple of issues.
AND, if Bristol Palin’s pregnancy now is, indeed, her second child, that Good Mommyhood Seal of Approval™ is tarnishing.
Well, given that between Troopergate, in the investigation of which she now
refuses to testify (PDF), her untruths about the “bridge to nowhere” and other reforming efforts she allegedly has pushed, and more, her image is now in tatters, if the Mommy Trig line is just another untruth, albeit one that more than any of her others, goes directly to character, it wouldn’t surprise me.
(More Palin staff Troopergate stonewalling
here by Frank Bailey, Palin’s director of boards and commissions.)
And, that all said, if she has been telling and living a lie with Trig, I think she’d have nothing but to gain now by coming out with the truth before any more damage is done.
Finally, given Bob Novak’s
Palin suck-up column, it’s clear that we’re not going to get any inside scoop on McCain’s mental processes in the Palin choice, as I
e-mailed him to request yesterday.
Consider this the roundup for day 5 of the Palin follies.
