Salon.com > Trig Birthers

Trig Trutherism: A response to Andrew Sullivan

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Last week we published a series of posts debunking Trig Trutherism, the idea that Sarah Palin is not the mother of the young Trig Palin.

Andrew Sullivan, who is the most prominent Trig doubter, has now weighed in with a lengthy post responding to both my investigation into the matter and a first-person account of an Alaska reporter who confronted Palin about the rumors while she was still pregnant in early 2008. (Both the Alaska reporter and I concluded that there is no reason to suspect an elaborate coverup.)

Sarah Palin’s pregnancy: What I saw

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Wesley Loy was a reporter with the Anchorage Daily News when Sarah Palin revealed her pregnancy in March 2008. The story that he wrote about her announcement -- which noted that many in the Alaska political world were surprised and didn't think that Palin looked pregnant -- is routinely cited by those who claim that Palin may have faked her pregnancy. Loy, who has never previously spoken or written about his own observations on this subject, has provided the following account of the Palin he saw and interacted with in February and March 2008.

Like everybody else in Alaska’s cozy state capitol building, I was stunned to hear of Governor Sarah Palin’s pregnancy.

I was one of three reporters who got a call to come up to the Palin’s office at the close of business on March 5, 2008. I was told the governor wanted to tell us something. Standing just outside the main entrance to her third-floor office, at the top of the stairs, she told us the first family was expecting a new member.

Trig Trutherism: The definitive debunker

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 11:01:00 +0000

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.

“Trig birtherism” and McCain’s choice of Palin

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 01:01:00 +0000

Like most media outlets, we've resisted engaging with "Trig birtherism" -- the notion that Sarah Palin may have somehow faked her pregnancy in 2008 -- for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that there's really no cause to suspect any kind of coverup in the first place.

But, as with claims that President Obama wasn't actually born in the United States, suspicions have flourished in some corners and -- especially with the release of what was purported to be an academic paper on the subject last week -- the conspiracy theory has made its way closer and closer to the mainstream. Lately, for instance, Andrew Sullivan has been blogging up a storm on the subject, arguing that the official story of Palin's pregnancy involves "so many bizarre details and choices that a simple request for independent evidence ... is totally legit."