Sarah Palin's Babygate for beginners

A few "Trig Truther" blogs had an increase in traffic in the past couple of days thanks to Andrew Sullivan linking to Bree Palin's post. Bree uncovered some Fox News footage showing a very "tight abs" Sarah Palin five days before she posed for a photo sporting a very nice pregnant belly.

The following comparison is even more striking:


As many of the newcomers are not familiar with the details of Sarah Palin's short and flat pregnancy, I'm going to do a quick recap of how this "conspiracy" evolved.

What made people suspicious, apart from the rumours that emerged in the early days of the vice presidential campaign? By announcing that Bristol was 5 months pregnant, the RNC hoped to put an end to those rumours: Sarah Palin faked the pregnancy to cover for her teenaged daughter, Desperate Housewives style. Based on the April 18 birthdate, Bristol couldn't possibly be the mother of both babies. Case closed, story dead.

But the story wouldn't go away. A bit of googling here and there led people to Sarah Palin's own account of her labour and delivery of Trig. That's what we have called the "wild ride" ever since. It was wild alright: after delivering her all important speech, leaking amniotic fluid and without being checked by a doctor, Sarah embarked on a series of long flights from Dallas to Seattle to Anchorage, including a 2 hour stopover, followed by another 50 minute car ride from Anchorage to a small, not adequately equipped hospital in Palmer.

Of course this startling account of events set many alarm bells ringing. Women with some experience of childbirth, others who had experienced leakages, parents who had premature babies with or without Down Syndrome, healthcare professionals, curious people, they all scratched their heads and said to themselves: "There's something fishy here."

Another thing that googling revealed was a very well scrubbed governor's website. Loads of photos had disappeared, all from the time of the pregnancy. The alarm bells rang louder. Sarah Palin couldn't scrub the whole internet and some interesting photos started to emerge.


As the popularity of Palin's Deceptions grew, so did the curiosity of the dedicated researchers, who were determined not to leave any stones unturned. Lots of documents were unearthed, some through the Freedom of Information Act, and a good collection of travel schedules, travel authorizations, court papers and other bits and pieces started to grow and make sense (or not) in the context of the famous "pregnancy".

After Tripp was born, allegedly on December 27 (or was it 28?), 2008, and was presented to the world via Fox News in mid-February 2009, people started to doubt the official date of Trig's birth. The Trig we saw as a premature newborn on April 18 simply didn't look like a premature baby. Sarah Palin took this "premature", jaundiced, special needs baby to work with her 3 days after his "birth" and presented him to the press. The wild ride and Trig's debut defied all known medical advice in cases such as the one Sarah presented as fitting her own particular circumstances.

There's a lot more. There are countless theories regarding Trig's parentage, but I'm going to stick with the simplest of scenarios. Although Bristol is the hottest candidate for Trig's mom, regardless of who the real mother is, one thing seems to be quite clear: Sarah Palin didn't give birth to Trig. Not on April 18, 2008 or any other date. She was never pregnant in 2007/2008.

All of Sarah Palin's daughters are more nurturing to Trig than Sarah ever was. She puts on a show when the cameras are rolling. A fly-on-the-wall camera would never catch Sarah Palin showing any spontaneous affection for this innocent child.

To Sarah Palin, Trig is nothing more than a prop to enhance her pro-life credentials, he's just a means to an end, the scoring of political points by appealing to the emotions and the good nature of the people she has duped. She also made a fair bit of money in donations to her SarahPac and "legal" fund from these misguided followers.

This is the sad story behind Babygate.

There was some high drama in the past few months, bloggers were outed, threatened, silenced.

But just as Sarah Palin couldn't hide all traces of her fake pregnancy from the search engines, she won't be able to stop all bloggers.

Research teams regroup, undeterred. We will continue to put this puzzle together, piece by piece. The truth will come out, sooner or later.

You betcha!

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