Sarah palin who is trig

What's their excuse for not investigating or even asking? Their first is Palin's alleged family privacy. But there is no family privacy once you have deliberately forced an infant with special needs into the bewildering public space, held him up at a convention way past his bedtime, made campaign speeches featuring him, hauled him around night and day on a book tour, and used him as the central prop in the construction of a political identity.

Trig matters because Palin has insisted that Trig matters. If she had had a child under odd circumstances and insisted that it was private and kept the child away from cameras and ensured that he had all the care and privacy that such a child obviously needs, no one, including me, would have inquired further.

But when you advance a political campaign using a child, it is imperative that the media investigate and probe the story. Their second reason for not investigating is that it doesn't really matter.

As I am often told by the Beltway crowd, she's never going to be president, she's just a flash-in-the-pan, leave it be, she'll go away soon enough. Well, she hasn't yet, has she? And for all those who believe as a fixed nostrum that she could never win the nomination, I can merely ask: who beats her, then? Trig's political salience is obvious, and critical to Palin's brand - in fact, the only thing, apart from her amazingly good looks, that keeps her in the game.

For generations, pro-lifers have voted Republicans into office on a strong anti-abortion platform. For forty years, they have been largely let down. They understandably feel as if the leadership condescends to them, exploits them and does not really believe in the cause. This was true of Reagan, Bush, and the second Bush. So how does a Republican politician truly convince the base that he or she is a true believer on the life issue?

Nothing does that like walking the walk of carrying a special needs child to term. And indeed, if that is the case, it speaks enormously highly of Palin, in my view, as I have said from the very very beginning. The way in which Palin has not let this speak for itself but has relentlessly exploited her story and child makes this an even more salient political issue - and one which deserves appropriate press scrutiny, as with any other core campaign platform.

But there has been no press scrutiny. In fact, there has been enormous pressure from the press not to investigate the story and to mock anyone who does so. You can't probe a woman like that because, well, it's a war on women! It's less likely that Palin is defending Hillary Clinton against perceived sexist comments, and much more likely that she's just taking another potshot at the Lamestream Media.

But unlike with the Trig Theory, nearly every reporter covering the campaign bought into another narrative — one about Palin's mental faculties. Was it fair to portray Palin as inexperienced and unfit for office? But that's far different from the image the media cultivated. Covering Palin as a bimbo was an unquestioned given. One is a valid point, the other is a caricature.

Of course, Hillary Clinton has suffered her fair share of sexist coverage. That said, his second assertion about "the spiral of silence" raises several issues about Palin, her birth story and the mainstream media that must be scrutinized fully as Palin continues to position herself for a run in the Republican primaries. In the end--as is the case with virtually all things Palin --the most troubling scenario regarding Trig's birth is the one proffered by Palin herself--a scenario that has been largely muted, or disregarded, by the focus on Trig's birth as being a "hoax.

Let me acknowledge that while researching my book I spent a considerable amount of time and resources trying to sort out the facts of Trig's birth. As with many elements of Palin's life story, there are disquieting discrepancies between what actually happened and Palin's version of events.

Her capacity for deceit simply knows no bounds, and this duplicity has contributed significantly to the atmosphere of doubt regarding the details of Trig's birth.

Contrary to Palin's contention otherwise, the rumors that Trig was not her son originated long before she was named as John McCain's running mate, commencing immediately upon her public acknowledgment, in March of , that she was pregnant. Palin, by her own account in Going Rogue , did not tell anyone but her husband Todd that she was pregnant with what would be the couple's fifth child.

She kept the news from her parents, siblings, children and her closest staff--odd behavior under any circumstances. Moreover, she did not tell members of her family that the child she was carrying had been diagnosed with Down syndrome. So when Palin announced being seven months pregnant--to a handful of reporters in Juneau on March 5, the rumor mill went into overtime.

Hoping to disprove the conspiracy theory when I initiated work on my book--and to put the story to bed once and for all--I interviewed several close associates of Palin's, including her friends and political allies. I was anticipating, perhaps even hoping, that they would tell me conclusively that Trig was her child. I was shocked by the response. One close friend of Palin's--a widely respected woman who had given birth to several children as well and who had close contact with Palin in Juneau up until the time of Trig's birth--told me that "Palin did not look like she was pregnant.

Even when she had the bulging belly, I never felt that the rest of her body, her face especially, looked like she was pregnant. I don't know what to believe. The news of Palin's pregnancy came as a complete surprise to Palin's State Trooper security detail Gary Wheeler, a well-liked, year veteran of the Alaska State Troopers who worked under several administrations in Alaska state government, both Republicans and Democrats.

Only two weeks earlier, in late February of , Wheeler had accompanied Palin back to Washington, D. Wheeler remembers that Palin had changed into jeans upon her arrival in Washington, with no apparent revelation of pregnancy.

Wheeler also said that his wife, Corky, actually made fun of him when the news came out because he was supposed to be a "trained observer. As Wesley Loy of the Anchorage Daily News reported it at the time, Governor Palin "shocked and awed just about everybody around the Capitol" with her announcement.

More significantly--and thus begins the troubling nature of even Palin's own account--according to Wheeler, Palin did not tell the Alaska State Troopers who were assigned to protect her that she was pregnant, even though her age and the fact that she was carrying a child with Down syndrome presented potential health complications. All of this both foreshadows and serves as an important prelude to Palin's troubling journey from Texas to Alaska, during which she was experiencing--again by her own account--early signs of childbirth, including the so-called breaking of her waters.

Palin was scheduled to make a speech at an RGA energy conference in Dallas on April 17, slightly less than eight months into her pregnancy. At the last moment before her trip to Texas--which involved a stopover in Seattle--Wheeler says that Palin made an "out-of-the-ordinary" announcement that she wouldn't be needing a Trooper to accompany her on her junket, and that her husband Todd would be traveling with her instead.

At on the morning of April 14, , only a day before her scheduled departure, Palin sent the following email to her administrative assistant, Janice Mason:. He's still our brother. When asked why she didn't tell the children earlier, Palin told Walters that she was not emotionally prepared to share the news with her family yet.

Instead, she said, she wrote it all down in a letter, which she hadn't yet delivered when Trig was born. About five thousand children like Trig are born with Down syndrome every year in the United States.

All are mentally challenged to varying degrees. They may face retardation, delayed language and slow motor development. Half of the babies born with Down each year suffer from congenital heart defects; Trig has a hole in his heart that may require surgery. So far, Palin said he can walk, but he has vision problems and, at 19 months, doesn't eat solid foods. It wasn't long ago that being a child with Down syndrome carried a stigma.

They were separated from societies, from their families," said Dr. Walters opened up about her own sister with special needs, who was teased and called "retarded. But, for the most part, people have been so loving and supportive of us that that encourages us and it makes us know that there is Trig accompanied Palin for stints on the campaign trail, which prompted scrutiny.

Many said she was exploiting her baby for a political end. You're kind of, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't," she told Walters. Todd Palin joined his wife for portions of the Barbara Walters interview. He brought Trig along too. Todd said that when his wife shared the news that their son would be born with Down syndrome, he knew his family could handle the challenge.