Trig Trutherism: The definitive debunker
Salon investigates the conspiracy theory: Is Sarah Palin really the mother of Trig Palin?
Topics: Trig Birthers, War Room, Politics News
Trig Trutherism, the surprisingly resilient conspiracy theory that Sarah Palin is not actually the mother of 3-year-old Trig Palin, is experiencing a boomlet thanks to a new academic paper that endorses the concept. Long pursued by the blogger Andrew Sullivan and a significant segment of the Palin-hating left, Trig Trutherism holds that Trig’s real mother is either Bristol Palin or some third party, and that Sarah Palin herself faked the pregnancy to avoid embarrassment for her daughter or for political gain or some combination of reasons.
In light of the recent attention this subject has received and the considerable passion it has stirred, Salon embarked last week on an investigation of the circumstances surrounding Trig’s birth. The exhaustive review of available evidence that we conducted, along with new interviews with multiple eyewitnesses who interacted with a pregnant Sarah Palin up-close in early 2008 — most of whom had never spoken publicly about the matter before — has produced one clear conclusion: Sarah Palin is, indeed, Trig’s mother and there is no reason to suspect any kind of a coverup.
We’ve learned, for instance, that an Associated Press reporter in Alaska who was covering Palin during her pregnancy in early 2008 (before she became a national figure) thoroughly investigated rumors that the pregnancy was a hoax. The reporter directly questioned Palin about the matter in a private meeting in her Juneau office before she gave birth. Gov. Palin responded by voluntarily lifting her outer layer of clothing, offering a clear look at her round belly. The reporter quickly concluded that there was no truth to the rumors and never wrote about them.
So why dive into this old conspiracy theory now?
After all, there’s a strong argument to be made that politicians’ private lives should not be subject to investigation unless there is suspicion of hypocrisy (e.g., Larry Craig) or some public policy implication (e.g., Mark Sanford). As Atrios put it, “if Trig was sired by Lucifer and birthed from a hippopotamus it’s really none of our business.” Sullivan has claimed that the birth of Trig, a baby with Down syndrome, played a key role in Palin being chosen for the GOP’s 2008 ticket, because it solidified her pro-life credentials. But the idea that this had anything to do with John McCain’s decision to tap Palin is easily debunked.
Still, for all of this, Trig Trutherism seems to have gained a significant following. There doesn’t appear to be any polling on the Trig question, but when we ran a dismissive post about the Trig Truthers last week, we were deluged with angry emails and tweets. (Sullivan, one of the leading doubters of Palin’s pregnancy, wrote a post accusing me of incuriosity and laziness.) Fed up with the attention the subject has received, the Huffington Post took the step this week of banning Trig Truthers. Whether we like it or not, this is a conspiracy theory that has gotten big enough to warrant a response.
(On a personal note, I should add that I hold no brief for Palin, and I’ve covered her critically in the past — see here, here, here and here.)
With that in mind, here we go.
Trig Truthers have fixated on any number of details about Sarah Palin’s pregnancy. Sullivan, for example, thinks it was irresponsible that, shortly before she went into labor, Palin got on a plane from Texas, where she had been speaking at a conference, and flew to Alaska.
But whether Palin acted irresponsibly is beside the point. The most important tenet of Trig Trutherism, of course, is that Palin simply was not pregnant before Trig was born. To establish this, Trig Truthers point to the news account of Palin’s March 5, 2008, announcement that she was seven months pregnant. In that story in the Anchorage Daily News, some Alaska politicos expressed their surprise that Palin was pregnant because she was not showing as much as some women do at that stage. (Trig was ultimately born a month early, on April 18.) Trig Truthers also point to some photos of Palin from that period that supposedly show an unusually flat stomach.
But these are the facts: There are numerous independent eyewitnesses who spent considerable time with Palin in early 2008 and who observed that she was pregnant. We spoke to several of them, and their accounts are detailed below. Their eyewitness accounts should carry more weight than the doubts of bloggers scrutinizing a few photos posted on the Web.
Another key claim by the Trig Truthers — repeated in the new academic paper that has re-popularized the conspiracy theory — is that the press fell down on the job by failing to investigate the rumors. But that claim, too, simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Steve Quinn, who is now a freelancer, was the Alaska-based Associated Press journalist who wrote the wire story reporting that Palin was pregnant in early March 2008. He told us that rumors were circulating that Palin was not truly pregnant even back then — before she gave birth and well before she was tapped to be John McCain’s running mate. So, like any good reporter, Quinn looked into it — twice — and came away with solid reasons to believe there was no hoax.
According to Quinn, in the days immediately after Palin announced her pregnancy that March, he was in the governor’s office and asked her directly about the rumors. Palin smiled and, Quinn says, lifted an outer layer of clothing to show that she was indeed pregnant. “She was able to show a thin layer of clothing against her stomach that revealed an enlarged abdomen area,” he says.
Quinn added that he heard from female legislators and friends of the governor that they suspected, based on physical changes, that Palin was pregnant well before she announced the news.
Several months later, after Palin had been tapped for the No. 2 slot on the GOP ticket, Quinn began looking into the rumors again. He called Palin’s doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, who had personally induced Palin’s labor in April. Baldwin-Johnson called him back several days after the Republican convention ended in early September. Quinn asked her directly if Trig was Sarah Palin’s baby. “The doctor flat-out told me it was Palin’s child,” he recalled.
We also spoke to Erika Bolstad, a veteran McClatchy reporter who covers Washington for the Anchorage Daily News. In early 2008, Bolstad began working on a story about the vice-presidential buzz surrounding Palin. When Palin traveled to Washington for a meeting of the National Governors Association, held the weekend of Feb. 23-25, Bolstad caught up with Palin for an in-person interview. This was about a week before the pregnancy was announced, and about seven weeks before Palin gave birth to Trig. Bolstad told us that she distinctly remembers thinking that the governor looked pregnant.
“When I interviewed her and heard the news a few days later that she was pregnant, there was no doubt in my mind that it was true,” she said. “I saw her. She looked pregnant.”
Comments
0 Comments