Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 02:54 pm
Fox News reports that Bristol Palin had a Son in Sept 08
Palin Secrets
Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol both testified at the email hacking trial of David Kernall, which found him guilty of 2 out of 4 charges. The trial lasted just two days.
In reporting the verdict this evening, Fox wrote:
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“Bristol Palin said she was distressed to find pictures of her newborn son in the public eye after her mother’s e-mail was hacked. Defense attorneys argued Kernall, the son of a Democratic state lawmaker, was just committing a college prank.”
Bristol’s baby Trip wasn’t born until late December of 2008, and the email hacking occurred during the campaign in September of 2008, just months after Trig was born. Thus bringing to light the very odd rumors long lingering around Sarah Palin even before she was tapped as VP candidate. Rumors that she was not pregnant prior to announcing the birth of her fifth son, Trig.
Perhaps Fox simply misreported this, or perhaps Bristol was messed up while testifying. We won’t know until we have access to the transcripts, but Fox’s report has been up for a while and they’ve had time to correct this if they made an error in their reporting.
The Anchorage Daily News reported on August 31, 2008:
“It’s a version of a rumor – long simmering in Alaska — that Palin’s daughter Bristol was pregnant and the governor somehow covered it up by pretending to have the baby (Trig) herself….The answer here should be pretty simple. It happened or it didn’t. For months, we have been getting anonymous people telling us they “know” it’s true, or people we do know telling us they’ve heard it fifth-hand. We haven’t seen anything resembling proof. We asked the governor’s office, and the governor, multiple times about it.”
The rumors swirling around Alaska back then were that Bristol Palin, then 16, was pregnant. Bristol had been out of school for months suffering from a reported case of mono, and had moved to live with her aunt in another town during her recovery. She was living with her aunt in February of 2008 when she received a ticket for an auto accident. Trig Palin’s birth was announced in April of 2008.
Kyle Hopkins from the Anchorage Daily News continues:
“Here’s a story we wrote soon after the birth. At that point, the questions were all about whether Palin should have flown back to Alaska to give birth. In the story, Palin’s doctor talks about the labor and addresses questions raised at the time about Palin’s decision to board a jet and fly to Alaska from Texas when she showed signs of early labor….The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation,” said an Alaska Airlines spokeswoman. The doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, said she induced labor once Palin was at the hospital….McAllister was an Anchorage TV reporter before working for Palin. He said Palin once approached him – before people knew she was pregnant – assuming he’d been hearing rumors.
“She said it’s not true about Bristol,” McAllister said. At the time, the rumor would have been that Palin’s daughter was pregnant. How does McAllister know it’s not true? “The governor’s not a liar. (oh dear) That’s the main reason. But also this would have to involve some sort of conspiracy with the hospital of Wasilla. They said she gave birth there. Is the doctor, the nurses … are they all lying?” he said.
Why not share the birth certificate?
“What a thing to request — prove that this is your baby,” McAllister said. “I mean, my god, that’s horrifying to think that she would have to do that.”
(Yes, my goodness, that would be horrible. Asked to supply a birth certificate. I think the birthers have put an end to this notion– apparently it’s patriotic to ask for birth certificates now, so ask away, people…)
I said one reason is to put it to rest.”
Anchorage Daily News reported on Arpil 22, 2008 :
‘Palin never got big with this pregnancy. She said she didn’t try to hide it but didn’t feel a need to alert the airline, either.
In a letter she e-mailed to relatives and close friends Friday after giving birth, Palin wrote, “Many people will express sympathy, but you don’t want or need that, because Trig will be a joy. You will have to trust me on this.” She wrote it in the voice of and signed it as “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.””
While American mainstream media outlets were loathe to pursue this line of inquiry, the Canadians were not intimidated by accusations of being biased “liberal media” and presented their questions on air in September of 2008:
ADN reports people who saw her weeks before the pregnancy said she “simply did not look pregnant,” which only fueled the rumors long before she was tapped as VP candidate.
The McCain Palin campaign attempted to spin these rumors as Democratic slanders against the Alaskan governor, however they never supplied Palin’s medical documents or answered any questions relating to this issue. Reporters who dared to bring it up were shamed with mention of amniotic fluid leaking, which apparently was enough to derail that line of questioning.
Since Palin quit as governor of Alaska midway through her first term, this rumor fell by the wayside — only to be revived by her home network this evening.
For more on Palin’s pregnancy, including interviews she gave wherein she describes being in labor and traveling from Texas to Alaska before giving birth, please see Palingates.com.
In the immortal words of Fox News: We report. You decide.
Indeed.
Corrected: Trip’s birth date per Daisydem comment from Dec 09 to Dec 08.
Updated Saturday, 12:53 PM : I feel compelled to point out that I could care less whether or not Palin lied about her fifth child so long as she stays out of our political arena. What I do care about is the Press’s obedience to all things Right Wing as well as the Left’s cowering in the face of the Right’s framing of what is and is not acceptable. To whit, a few examples: It is NOT ok to question John McCain’s POW experience, but it is perfectly patriotic to accuse John Kerry of being a coward. It is NOT acceptable to ask Sarah Palin about a very odd story that makes NO sense for which no medical or birth certificates were ever forth-coming, but it is patriotic to question the President’s birth even after multiple sources identify his birth certificate as authentic. The fourth estate is designed to be the agitator of those in power and yet they leave it to the “socialist” Canadians to actually cover wild inconsistencies in the personal story of a person who would be next in line to the ruler of the free world.
Yes, it was only after the campaign that Steve Schmidt and others stepped forward to admit that they had grave concerns over Palin’s mental health, a truth which might have been uncovered had anyone in the press had the COURAGE to do their job. And so, NO, I will not let this story go, because it represents an abject failure of our media and of the left. We must not let the Right frame discussions as we have for the last 40 years. A little common sense wouldn’t hurt, either. Listen to her story and ask yourself, is this someone I would want second in line to the President? The story is pertinent as it goes to her judgment if nothing else. But I leave the “nothing else” to the Right to dissect, seeing as they can’t keep their hands out of anyone else’s personal life but insist on their family lives being sacred. Inconsistencies R Us continues.
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