Nicole Sandler has shown a great interest in "babygate", Sarah Palin's supposed pregnancy with Trig, and she is one of the very, very few people in the media who are prepared to touch the subject.
Palingates published numerous posts in the past discussing the "wild ride" in great detail, for example closely examining Palin's various accounts of it, and pointing out that Palin's description is simply impossible from a medical point of view - see here, here, here and here.
Shannyn Moore and I also had a conversation about the "wild ride" and Palin's pregnancy several months ago on Shannyn's radio show, see here and here.
You can view Nicole Sandler's complete broadcast from July 23 here (shown above is the full, unedited discussion of Nicole Sandler with Shannyn and AKM, but she had many other guests).
Nicole Sandler's website is http://radioornot.com.
Our brilliant reader EyeOnYou made a transcript of the part of the discussion which dealt with "babygate", and I have looked through it as well, but please note that it's probably still not 100% accurate:
N (Nicole Sandler): I said to you last night, that I thought no woman would get on plane after her water broke, but S made a good point, we need to take her at her word on this one. She did indeed get on a plane from Tx. to Ak, after her water had broken, a month early...
S (Shannyn Moore): Well, what she's willing to admit to, her official story is, which we were covering, I was on the air, actually we broke the story that her, that the baby was even born, so...her official story to me is worse than any of the stories that anyone is making up, so why don't you take the worst one which is the one you can prove, which is the one she admits to,...
AKM (Jeanne Devon): And is the one she doesn't refudiate,
S: She doesn't refudiate that one,
N: She admits that she got on a plane, after her water had broken, for how long of a flight is it from Texas back to Alaska?
S: I don't know, she stopped in, she had at least one stopover,
AKM: Right, she stopped and got on another plane, I think she stopped in Seattle
S: Probably 12 or 14 hours or so..probably 12 hours or so,
N: This is her fifth child
S: um hm
AKM: right
S: ...and she was a month premature with a child that she knew had Down Syndrome
AKM: and she was 45 years old
S: ...and she was 45, so her own health, the health of the child, were of no concern or anyone else's schedule, so all of the quote unquote conspiracy theories, um, that's fine, that people get there, and I understand, because no one can really believe that she do that, would admit to doing this... but she's..
N: She's a pro-life woman, how could a pro-life woman endanger her unborn child like that?
S: That's a very good question. You know what, the week that that happened, that she flew home, um, in labor and all this, there was a man who was evading the police, there was a warrant out for his arrest, he wasn't high or drunk or anything, when he was evading the police, but he had a child in a seatbelt, or in a car seat in his car. He was arrested and he was charged with reckless endangerment because he had driven fast trying to evade the police, that was in Anchorage and this same week, so for that reason I said at the time, I said: How is this not endangering a child? And they laughed it off saying "we didn't want a fishpicker born in Texas"...
N: they didn't want a...?
S & AKM: A fishpicker
AKM: someone who picks fish out of the nets
S: an Alaskan job, a commercial job
AKM: he's a fisherman
S: We didn't want an Alaska fishpicker born in Texas
N: Oh god
S: and that was their reason
N: and that was okay
S: and everybody was okay
AKM: and everybody was like ha, ha, ha
S: Alaska rocks kinda thing
S: So do healthy babies, that's just geography,....so you know, I think maybe there is something to what everybody says but as far as...its working for her. All of these conspiracy sites, about the trig truthers or whatever, are, it works very very well for her, because it makes everything else look insane, and what she did do actually does look insane but they don't talk about it.
N: what she did actually is insane
AKM: and she enjoys being able to point the finger and say look, oh look at all these people, they don't even think my baby is my baby, and it sounds conspiracy theory, it sounds tin foil hat and it works for her
S: it works for her
AKM: it works for her because it casts everybody else in that light so that everyone goes oh yeah those nutcases, then they don't listen to anything else they say,
S: it's like Orly Taitz, the birthers, and everybody gets cast in the same light, and you know what, if you say I think it was really irresponsible to get on a plane when you are 45 years old, when you know you have a baby with Down Syndrome, and not go right to the hospital...
N: Right..
S: I think that is really dangerous
N: Right if you take the story at face value, and why isn't that being investigated as child endangerment?
S: And I have, I don't want you making decisions for the country, the state, my town or anywhere else because you obviously don't have a very good sense of judgement.
AKM: And the other thing is if she had told Alaska Airlines that she was if she had told them that her water was broken, but that she was that pregnant she would not have been permitted to fly...
N: You told me something else that I found interesting because we see these pictures of supposedly at 7 months pregnant, she doesn't look very pregnant, that she wasn't even eating during her pregnancy and she was running...and doing things that a pregnant woman shouldn't do.
AKM: Well I think that some of that was even mentioned in the book, Game Change, that in moments of high tension and stress, that that was her tendancy, she wasn't eating during the campaign, that she was drinking diet dr pepper and eating atkins diet bars, and like that was it,
S: ...and she lived on like...what was it, some mocha chocolate, skinny..
AKM: skinny white chocolate mochas
S: skinny white chocolate mochas that she was, one of her aids came on my show and...
AKM: I used to like those and now I can't even order them any more
S: ...one of her aids came on my show and was like 'that's all she lived on', and that she would start getting hungry and ... that it was a problem like she would be like...and (doing the hand phone motion) it was like Todd you need to feed her, phone calls had to be made, so
N: okay, so highly irresponsible if nothing else and you don't even need to say..
S: it's bad judgement, at the least
N: okay
(in the last part of the discussion about Trig, being asked by Nicole, Shannyn explains that she doesn't believe that Trig was named after the condition "Trisomy-G", that she thinks it's a coincidence, and AKM thinks if it was true that Trig was named after "Trisomy-G", it would be counter-productive with the special needs crowd)
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Please read all posts by Palingates about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy HERE. Our PDF-summary document about the pregnancy can be downloaded HERE.
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Andrew Sullivan just published another post about the "Trig-issue", and he quoted from a letter of a reader. As this letter is a very good summary of why the "Trig Truthers" are pursuing the case, I would like to repeat it here:
"I completely agree with you on the importance of this issue and the discredit that the lack of inquiry places on the journalistic profession. However, I cannot agree with your recent suggestion (not the first time) that the story may boil down to a simple exaggeration of the facts of the "wild ride."
While it is certain that her tale is not credible, it is not just the wild ride aspect of the story that raises eyebrows; this has to be taken in the context of all the other things that don't add up about her story. The lack of a pregnant physique, and then the impossibly-morphing body shapes. The fact that no one knew. The timing of the announcement. The odd story of the too-early amniocentesis. The disappearance of Bristol, her pregnant appearance and substantiated claims that she was pregnant in 2007. The lack of any documentation whatsoever of the birth. The changing details. The fact that neither the doctor, nor the hospital, were qualified and certified to perform this high-risk delivery, known to have at least 6 high-risk factors -- and neither ever verified the birth story. The odd discrepancies in the letter released by the McCain-Palin campaign late on election eve. The inability of ADN to disprove the rumors, despite trying. Sarah's long history of lying. Heather Bruce's confirmation that Bristol lived with her while pregnant, which had to be earlier than the pregnancy with Tripp.
And this is not all! This is a preponderance of credible evidence that the story is a lie. As the would-be whistleblower on Bernie Madoff said (paraphrasing), "there was no smoking gun, but too many things just didn't add up." That is the hallmark of a hoax."
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Please note:
Addressing the heated discussion in the comments, I would like to remind everyone to make the points on the issue and not personally against other bloggers. We don't want to encourage anyone here to attack other bloggers or commenters personally. We at Palingates are proud to have this free discussion forum which is one of the very few places on the internet where "babygate" can be discussed without restrictions, but let's all try to be civil in our remarks.
We think it is important to discuss the relevance and the details of the "wild ride" - and that's what Palingates has done in previous posts. This issue and the discussion are very important for us.
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UPDATE:
Let me address some of the issues which are being discussed in the interview. First of all, I have to say that the comparison to the "Obama birthers" doesn't frighten me one bit. The reason is that Sarah Palin herself explicitly said in a radio interview in December 2009 that the Obama birthers are asking "a fair question". But not only that - she even expanded on this point:
_____________________________________________________HUMPHRIES: Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?
PALIN: Um, I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think enough members of the electorate still want answers.
HUMPHRIES: Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?PALIN: I think it's a fair question, just like I think past associations, past voting records, all of that is fair game. You know, I gotta tell you, too, I think our campaign, the McCain-Palin campaign, didn't do a good enough job in that area. We didn't call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don't think that was fair to voters, to not have done our jobs as candidates and as a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we're seeing made manifest in the administration.HUMPHRIES: I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama's past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?PALIN: Hey, you know, that's a great point. That weird conspiracy theory freaky thing that people talk about, that Trig isn't my real son, a lot of people say, "Well, you need to produce his birth certificate, you need to prove that he's your kid," which we have done, but yeah, so maybe we should reverse that and use the same type of thinking on the other one.______________________________________________________
These remarks by Sarah Palin are incredibly interesting, because in the last part, she explicitly says that the Palin camp has already produced Trig's birth certificate, and goes on to say: "Maybe we should reverse that and use the same type of thinking on the other one."
So, first of all, this is again a blatant lie by Sarah Palin. She has never shown Trig's birth certificate in public - not to the McCain campaign and also not to journalists who, like Andrew Sullivan and Pat Dougherty, the editor of the Anchorage Daily News, were asking for it. Even the Alaska Benefits Section took the unusal step to ask for Trig's birth certificate in an email to Sarah Palin on May 21, 2008. Whether they received the birth certificate in the end is not known to us.
Second of all, it again shows in which warped reality Sarah Palin lives. It seems to me that it's in fact wishful thinking that she could show Trig's birth certificate. This has the advantage that she now can turn it round: They are asking for Trig's birth certificate despite the fact that we have shown it, and now we can keep on asking questions about Obama's birth despite the fact that the birth certificate for Obama has been produced.
Therefore, an extremely important part of Palin's argument here is the assertion that Trig's birth certificate has been produced in public - which is a lie.
So why should we be afraid of being compared to Obama birthers?
It seems to me that even Sarah Palin recognizes that her argument would NOT be valid if Trig's birth certificate would still be hidden - so she just lies on the spot.
In addition, it's in fact part of Sarah Palin's record to ask opponents for documentation regarding their "associations". Andrew Sullivan quotes the following excerpt from another article:
Andrew then comments:
"Within a few months, Palin was officially challenging Stein and exploiting the cultural shift masterfully. She welcomed a national anti-abortion group in to carpet bomb Wasilla with pink postcards affirming her pro-life bona fides. She orchestrated an NRA endorsement and a mailing from the group falsely proclaiming Stein, a lifelong hunter, "anti-gun." (Stein complained to the local newspaper that Palin was telling voters he wanted to "melt down" all the firearms in the state.) And, in a move practically out of Karl Rove's playbook, she dwelled on how Stein's wife used her maiden name, going so far as to demand a marriage certificate as proof of their nuptials. Palin's campaign literature proclaimed her "deeply devoted to conservative family values"--all in the context of an ostensibly nonpartisan election. (Stein himself was a moderate Republican.)"
So it is part of Palin's record to demand the marriage license of a fellow Republican, but to ask for any medical confirmation of the mysterious birth of Trig earlier this year, any affidavit from the obstetrician, any objective evidence at all that Trig is indeed Sarah Palin's biological child is, well, in the words of John Podhoretz, "virtually unspeakable." Look: this is usually not hard at all. Births are recorded at the hospitals where they occur. And, as you might expect, there's a long list of babies born at Mat-Su Medical center, where we are told Trig was born on April 18 this year. But for some reason, Trig Palin's name is not among them.
So it's just fair and rational to ask Sarah Palin for Trig's birth certificate. I don't think that any rational person would actually disagree with it, after thinking it through.
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Let me show again one of the simple reasons why the "Trig Truthers" are convinced that Sarah Palin's pregnancy didn't happen - the fact that the petite and slender Sarah Palin simply didn't look pregnant. Our reader curioser created the follow comparison:
A woman from the USA put an overview about the progression of her own pregnancy on flickr. I think that this is a valid comparison, because this woman also appears to be relatively small and slender, very much like Sarah Palin:
A woman from the USA put an overview about the progression of her own pregnancy on flickr. I think that this is a valid comparison, because this woman also appears to be relatively small and slender, very much like Sarah Palin:
One reader pointed out in the comments today that Sarah Palin could have starved herself during the pregnancy, a point which was also discussed in the interview, and linked to this website. Here a woman describes how she starved herself during her second pregnancy, and she writes:
Well, while I am not a medical professional, I would like to point out that it's on the record that Trig, a baby with Down Syndrome, was born five weeks premature and still had the astonishing weight of 6 lbs. 2. oz. That's not an underweight baby, and Trig looked far from starved when he was presented on April 18, 2008. These are the only available pictures from that day, courtesy of KTUU:
"When I finally delivered my second child by cesarean section, I had only put on about 18 pounds; yet I hardly looked pregnant. I was 5' 8" and weighed just above 135 lbs. Whitney, my second child, was born underweight but did not have any medical problems at birth."
At full term, Trig would have been a respectable eight-pounder!
Ennealogic once made a great post with a comparison to "real" five-week premature babies, which I encourage everyone to revisit.
Here is a screenshot from the official birth announcement:
Therefore I do not believe that Sarah Palin starved herself and her baby.
In addition, I would like to point out that even very slim woman cannot hide pregnancies - the baby has to go somewhere:
This is a picture of ultra-slim Victoria Beckham when she was pregnant:
Sarah Palin was not pregnant. We want the truth about what exactly happened and who the real mother of Trig is, and I cannot pretend to follow a certain line just because it's politically convenient.
Let's take Sarah Palin at her word and ask her: To whom have you shown Trig's birth certificate?
Why should that be a taboo? Sarah Palin herself says that these questions are fair.
Let's keep it simple and straightforward. If we would all do that and pull together in the right direction, Palin's house of lies would crumble fast.
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UPDATE 2:
This post is already quite long, but in order to support the lively, very good discussion which is going on in the comments right now, I shortly would like to mention some facts which we will probably discuss in greater detail in a future post. Some commentators discussed the details of the travel, for example the question when Sarah Palin returned to Anchorage. Some of you will probably not be aware of the fact that there are two pieces of documentation available that contain details about the travel:
Please see THIS FOLDER for more copies from Sarah Palin's official schedule and other documents.
This is a screenshot from the travel authorizations:
You can see that the details of the flight from Anchorage TO Dallas are mentioned. However, regarding the flight back, it's only mentioned that they arrived at 11.00 pm in Anchorage on April 17, 2008. Same in the official schedule. No other flight details for the flight back from Dallas to Anchorage can be found anywhere.
These documents also show that Sarah Palin was "in full swing" again from April 21, 2008. Even on April 18, 2008, she signed a bill, which is mentioned in both documents. However, interviews from April 18 with Sarah Palin which are mentioned in the documents have never surfaced, according to our best knowledge.
It is also interesting to note that in addition to the flights to Dallas, Sarah Palin also flew from Juneau to Anchorage on April 14, 2008. There were several more flights which Sarah Palin undertook in the "late stage" of her pregnancy. We will summarize them in a future post. I would be grateful if anyone who finds information regarding her flights from January - April 2008 could send me this information via email.
There is another very curious email correspondence which is worth discussing.
On April 5, 2008, Sarah Palin sent the following message to staff members and to Todd, Track, Bristol and Willow:
Her staff member Janice Mason answered:
So Sarah Palin, who is supposedly almost 8 months pregnant, was planning on April 5, 2008 a round-trip with the King Air, the airplane which was owned by the state of Alaska, for April 20, 2008?
I personally believe that Sarah Palin would never do anything which could endanger herself.
I am convinced that a highly pregnant Sarah Palin with her history of miscarriages, now supposedly with her 7th pregnancy, carrying a Down Syndrome baby, would not have gone on so many flights. This is just one of many reasons why Sarah Palin's alleged pregnancy did not happen.
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