We already know that Sarah Palin’s memoir is filled with falsehoods and distortions, so it’s not a surprise to see that it appears a Palin defender is resorting to the same tactics.
A Nov. 18 Newsmax article by Dan Weil features Matthew Continetti’s “The Persecution of Sarah Palin,” about which he writes:
Continetti said the mainstream political media spread one falsehood after another about Palin including that she:
- Had been a member of the separatist Alaskan Independence Party (New York Times)
- Had been a supporter of Pat Buchanan (MSNBC)
- Faked giving birth to Trig Palin, who was supposedly her grandson (Atlantic Monthly)
Well, let’s see:
- The Times’ source for the claim that Sarah Palin belonged to the Alaskan Independence Party was the head of the party. The Times issued a correction after the party chief changed her story.
- MSNBC’s source for Palin being a supporter of Pat Buchanan was … Pat Buchanan.
So these claims were not invented out of thin air, as Continetti and Newsmax suggest.
As for the claim about Trig Palin, that’s largely the work of Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan, not the entire Atlantic Monthly. And as Sullivan points out, he never actually disputed Trig’s parentage, but merely “asked her and the campaign to provide easily available proof that she indeed was the biological mother of Trig after her bizarre and incredible stories about her pregnancy and labor. She has failed to produce any such evidence. And she clearly never will.”
That’s rather ironic given that Newsmax has signed on to demanding that Barack Obama release further proof of his birth.