The Rogue, Chapter 19 by Joe McGinniss -- Sarah Palin's Trig Pregnancy Questions - - UPDATE

By Blueberry Tart

I just received a copy of The Rogue, courtesy of Crown Publishing – thank you! Joe has left some choice tidbits over the past few months about his treatment of Babygate (our word, not his). In his blog he claimed to be “Trignostic,” but Chapter 19 presents very convincing arguments for doubting Palin’s story and certainly offers enough evidence of the hoax to arouse the curiosity of those who may not already realize how implausible her tale is. While none of this information is new to those of us who are familiar with Babygate, this will be new to many readers, and is bound to arouse greater suspicion that Palin has indeed perpetrated a massive hoax on America (with the complicity of the media, still continuing today).

McGinniss says that he began his exploration of this topic unconvinced that she had staged a hoax, but that the number of people – including Sarah’s supporters – who doubt her story truly surprised him. He presents this as a journey from considering the doubts “outlandish” to recognizing, as he delved deeper into it, that her story has huge holes in it. The unfolding of his realization of the massive inconsistencies in her story will remind McGinniss fans of some of his other work.

He presents Andrew Sullivan’s questions about Trig’s birth in a very positive light, quoting one of Sullivan’s posts about why asking these questions is legitimate and relevant, and putting the onus on the media for their failure to investigate the glaring questions.

The book lays out the core reasons why this is an issue: she showed no signs of pregnancy even through 7 months; her story of labor and birth is not credible; and she has not provided any medical or birth records. He shows that the initial reaction to reports gave credence to the possibility of a hoax, but were quickly squelched by the announcement that Bristol was pregnant. He covers the JournoList conspiracy of silence and Sullivan’s blistering indictment of their “mad dash toward its own immolation on a pyre of irrelevance.” (It’s funny how none of the media reviews published this past week have included that quote.)

I’m especially happy to see that McGinniss makes clear that the medical records were never released and that the letter [purportedly] from Dr. Cathy Baldwin-Johnson “…did not confirm either that she had delivered Trig or that Sarah had given birth to him.”

Although McGinniss does say that there were “…a network of arcane conspiracy theories…” he also says that “…one does not have to wear a tinfoil hat to wonder.”

He lays out the strange timeline and weird facts: DC trip in late February showing no signs of pregnancy; announcement of pregnancy just after McCain’s announcement; cancelling her security detail for the trip to Texas (and why that was particularly strange under the circumstances); feeling “desperation for this baby” but not enough to go to any of five nearby hospitals in Texas to be checked out; the risk factors of this birth; the strange interview where she hemmed and hawed about what had happened; the different account in Going Rogue; Todd’s emails about her speech but saying nothing about the possible early birth.

In case any readers are unsure of the point here, Joe includes a statement from a doctor pointing out how outrageous Sarah’s birth story is: “What kind of mother would take a risk like that with her child, let alone a high risk, premature one?” He also includes Andrew Sullivan’s report from eight leading obstetricians: “all of them said that it was one of the strangest and unlikeliest series of events they had ever heard of…”

There’s not much on the other side of the “Trignostic” equation, as far as I can see. Joe does include a statement by a friend who patted her belly and said she seemed pregnant, but immediately counters with the fact that the Alaska Airlines flight attendants did not notice that she was pregnant. McGinniss briefly lays out the possibilities that Sarah deliberately tried to kill the fetus or that “the pregnancy story was cooked up in a hurry…” as a political ploy. He points out that “Giving birth to [a child with Down Syndrome] would make Sarah the patron saint of the antiabortion movement and would spark fervent enthusiasm within a Christian conservative base that was notably cool toward McCain.”

In the end, Joe says that if her story is true, then she and Todd “were guilty only of gross negligence and a level of irresponsibility that put the life of their unborn child at severe and deliberate risk.” He also notes that a remarkable number of Alaskans who know Sarah do not believe that Trig is her child. In the end, he points out that “those who know her best believe her least.”

My take: this chapter puts Babygate squarely on the radar screen for many readers who are not familiar with the many discrepancies in the Sarah Palin’s bizarre story of Trig’s presentation to the world. I think he goes farther than Geoffrey Dunn in tackling the story and exposing why it doesn’t add up. (If his readers were to see some of the key Babygate photos, their disbelief would surely grow.) Overall – great job, Joe – now I’m off to read the rest of the book!

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UPDATE BY PATRICK:

This chapter by Joe McGinniss in his book about what we came to call "babygate" is a highly important and a equally courageous step in the fight for truth which now has been going on for three years, and in which bloggers and also Andrew Sullivan with his powerful voice were at the forefront of the investigation. Bloggers received help from their community of readers, and later new powerful voices emerged, such as Prof. Brad Scharlott, Laura Novak and and Henry Blodget from Business Insider, as well as Geoffrey Dunn also devoted several well researched pages to this topic in his overlooked, excellent book "The Lies of Sarah Palin."

Joe McGinniss recently wrote a post in which questioned the usefulness of blogging against Sarah Palin, and I don't want to enter this discussion, apart from saying that unfortunately I cannot agree with the views which he expressed in his post. However, it should not be forgotten that Joe McGinniss also gave the bloggers a lot of credit as far as the investigation into "babygate" is concerned. At the end of August, Joe left several comments on his blog in which he gave an indication of how helpful the blogs actually were with the investigation into Sarah Palin's pregnancy with Trig. They are worth to be repeated here.

Comment by Joe McGinniss from August 26, 2011:

August 26, 2011 at 10:14 pm
To point out that some people are obsessed by Sarah’s having gotten away with so much for so long is not to put down those people. I’m simply pointing out that there are many Palin “obsessives” and that if Ms. Malone wants to write about “obsessives,” she should write about those who comment so frequently on Palin-related blogs. I, too, am grateful for politicalgates, palingates, immoral minority, progressive alaska, malia litman, laura novak and many others for doing the job that MSM should have been doing since 2008 (and Alaskan media even before that.)
–Joe

Comment by Joe McGinniss from August 28, 2011:

August 28, 2011 at 11:38 pm
May we try to maintain some perspective? I have great respect for–and have learned a lot from–all the bloggers I’ve already mentioned, including Immoral Minority, Progressive Alaska, Palingates, Politicalgates, and several others. But the fact is that no one at Crown Publishing had ever even heard of any of these blogs in November, 2009, when I was signed to write THE ROGUE. Bloggers about Palin have much of value to say, and some say it quite well, but they are not on the radar screen of major publishers in New York, such as Crown, which this fall will publish, in addition to THE ROGUE, the memoirs of Condoleeza Rice. I’d published eleven books before being signed to write THE ROGUE. Five of them were New York Times best-sellers. Of the six that were not, five received major–and favorable–reviews in the New York Times Book Review. I don’t mean to brag by saying that, but I’d had a forty-year career as a successful author before signing a contract to write a book about Palin. Anyone who thinks that bloggers about Palin were somehow responsible for the offer from Crown Publishing that I accepted simply doesn’t understand how the real world works.

I know Phil Munger and Jesse Griffin personally. I consider myself their friend. Whether I’m their friend or not, I admire much of what they do on their blogs. I’ve exchanged several emails with Patrick of Politicgates. I think the Politicalgates archives are the best single available resource for anyone wondering why questions are still being asked about Sarah really being Trig’s birth mother. The Immoral Minority archives are also rich in widely ignored material. I quote and credit both Phil and Jesse in THE ROGUE.

Please don’t think that I consider myself on some higher plane. I don’t.

I do, however, get paid for my writing, which allows me to do the sort of extended and immersive reporting that people like Phil and Jesse are not able to do. That doesn’t make me a better person, or even a better writer, but it ought to suggest
that a book I’ve worked on full-time for almost two years, with months prior to that spent on a magazine story about the same subject, might contain something of value. You can all judge for yourselves, starting September 20.
–Joe

The investigation into "babygate" dealt to a large part with the interpretation and analysis of photos. Therefore, I would like to present some of the "best" examples, especially in case newcomers to babygate will read this post. If you believe your eyes, you will be damned, because then you will realize that we deal with one the most obvious frauds that ever happened. If you don't believe your eyes, your mind will not be troubled with the fact that a sitting Governor and subsequent Republican vice-presidential candidate faked a pregnancy - and (almost) got away with it.

This is what a "normal" pregnancy usually looks like:

However, Sarah Palin's pregnancy with Trig was "somewhat different."

On April 18, 2008, she gave birth to a baby weighing 6 lbs. 2 oz:

At the day of his birth, Trig looked pretty healthy and chubby - quite unusual for a premature down-syndrome baby which was born early at 8 months (later, Sarah Palin even claimed in several speeches like this one that Trig was born at 7 1/2 months!).

This was Trig on April 18, 2008, around lunchtime -pictures taken by the Alaska TV-channel KTUU:

While this already seemed quite suspicious, all warning bells rang when people started to listen to Sarah Palin's own version of the story, which she presented in a press conference on April 21, 2008 - fortunately, the recording survived:


Upload MP3s using free MP3 hosting from Tindeck.

Also here:

Sarah Palin's water broke while she was in Texas, but instead of going to a hospital immediately, Sarah Palin chose to fly back to Alaska, and was content simply to give her doctor Cathy Baldwin-Johnson a call in order to get medical advice - so Sarah Palin claims.

But what attracted even more disbelief were the photos which were taken during Sarah Palin's supposed pregnancy with Trig - we see a woman which simply isn't pregnant.

Just a few examples:

February 5, 2008 ("Super-Tuesday"), a bit more than two months away from giving birth:

Look what Sarah could do on March 1, 2008 - the birth just 1 1/2 month away (the photographer took a few similar pictures):

March 14, 2008 - just about one month from giving birth, but no baby-bump visible (click for news report):

Now we move on to our "favourite" day - March 26, 2008, not even four weeks before Trig was officially born.

This picture which was taken on March 26, 2008 was already discovered at the end of 2008 (large size HERE):

This and some other pictures were discovered only recently:

Where is the baby bump? Sarah Palin's invisible pregnancy continued...until April 13, 2008, when Sarah Palin proudly presented quite an enormous baby bump. In a news report by Alaska TV-channel KTVA, Sarah Palin finally had the chance to show that she was pregnant. Not many people noticed at the time, but on August 31, 2008, the day of Sarah Palin's nomination, some pictures from this KTVA-interview on April 13, 2008 mysteriously appeared on flickr - and became soon the ultimate "end-all-rumours-and-bash-the-doubters" evidence, the universal weapon that Sarah Palin needed. Even factcheck.org was fully convinced in light of this documentation. Sarah had a baby bump! No more questions had to be asked.

Two pictures were later released in larger resolution by KTVA on their webpage - here they are (large sizes HERE and HERE):

So all is fine, isn't it? That doubters and "haters" have been squelched, right? Sarah Palin was pregnant, so shut up, everybody!

Or not?

Well, it turned out that Sarah Palin had the "speediest"pregnancy of all times - because just three weeks earlier, she looked very, very different, take a close look:

Also, it's a fact that already in 2008, rumours about a faked pregnancy by Sarah Palin were rampant in Alaska, and not only that: Several serious people were actually convinced or even knew that the pregnancy was faked. Watch for example this interview with Michael Carey, columnist of the Anchorage Daily News from September 2008, which was buried in an internet archive and discovered by the bloggers:

"Babygate" has been covered in more detail in previous posts. You can find all this information here:

Palin-biographer Joe McGinniss: "I think the Politicalgates archives are the best single available resource for anyone wondering why questions are still being asked about Sarah really being Trig’s birth mother." (from August 28, 2011)

Kathleen Baker, editor of Politicalgates, writes in the UK "Guardian" about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy: "Sarah Palin, unreliable narrator"

Read all posts at Politicalgates about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig - FOR THE COLLECTION, CLICK HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE,HERE AND HERE.

Download the research paper regarding Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy and the role of the media, written by Brad Scharlott, Associate Professor for Journalism at Northern Kentucky University - CLICK HERE.

Brad Scharlott's revised version of the paper has also been published by "Business Insider."

Read the old post at Palingates about the faked pregnancy with the pictures still intact in hardcopy HERE.

Read the old posts at Palingates online HERE (useful also for watching the video clips which were published with the posts).

In addition, please don't hesitate to watch the excellent video-documentaries about "babygate" which our reader Lidia17 created - HERE, HERE and HERE.

We break the "Spiral of Silence" - Read the details about the "biggest hoax in American political history!"

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