Sarah Palin's "Wild Ride" - The Fourth Anniversary - The Birth of "Babygate"

By Patrick

Sarah Palin's "Wild Ride" on April 17, 2008 was an event which had far reaching consequences. Without the "Wild Ride", the would have never been a "Trig Truther movement", and there would have never been the blog "Politicalgates." Our blog is the creation of activists of this movement, who, like Kathleen and myself, might have remained fairly "passive" participants in this big brave new internet world. But Sarah Palin decided to tell the world this "cock and bull story" (click for audio) which later became infamous as the "Wild Ride" - at story which made many people suspicious. Therefore we should be grateful to Sarah Palin, shouldn't we?

Four years ago, Sarah Palin's world was a different one. She was the powerful Governor of Alaska, and self-conscious to the extreme. Later the went on to become John McCain's running mate, and in the wake of this fateful move by John McCain she also quickly became America's biggest national joke. Today, after many more embarrassing moments, including moments which further divided the US society, she is what one could call "disgraced", and there can hardly be a greater insult for a female politician these days than to be called "the next Sarah Palin."

Therefore Sarah Palin, who now mainly seems to be concerned with preserving a lucrative TV-career for herself and other members of her family, isn't really a threat any more. But it was quite a long way before we got to this point. I am sure that today the media won't be keen to be reminded how virtually every tweet and every facebook post by Sarah Palin and her busy ghostwriters in 2009 and 2010 received major media coverage. Sarah Palin was a hot topic back then, and she managed to spread a lot of propaganda around, and the media didn't seem to care too much whether she was a vicious demagogue or not.

In my view, Sarah Palin's TV-career was only made possible because the media collectively decided not to report about what is probably her biggest secret: Her faked pregnancy with Trig - because the revelation of this huge, shameless lie would have thrown her off the airwaves in my opinion.

But the media didn't report on the pregnancy because there wasn't anything to report about. The main reason, as we also know from the leaked Journolist emails, was that the liberal minded journalists were actually afraid to touch the issue, because they were scared that it could backfire on their preferred candidate. This candidate, Barack Obama, conveniently declared already on September 1, 2008 that the children should be left out of the campaign. This statement was then generously interpreted by the media, as Sarah Palin's pregnancy was afterwards "out of bounds", with very few exceptions to this rule - but hardly any exceptions - which led to what Brad Scharlott later called the "Spiral of Silence."

In one of his most important posts about "babygate", Andrew Sullivan found harsh words for the collective decision by the media to leave Palin's pregnancy issue alone, as shown in the Journolist emails.

This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever. And people wonder how this farce of a candidate now controls one major political party and could well be our next president. One reason is that we do not have a functioning adversarial media uncorrupted by partisan loyalty and tactics.

In 2011, it became even worse, when liberal journalists, with Justin Elliott at Salon as their "leader", tried to finally "debunk" the fake pregnancy theories - and failed miserably. But as it stands now, it will be "written in the history books" that the allegations that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy were finally "debunked" by the media - although nothing of that sort actually took place.

When recently it was discovered in Sarah Palin's emails from 2008 and 2009 that Palin and her busy team in the Governor's office started a vicious bullying campaign against Lisa Demer, journalist at the Anchorage Daily News, as well as against their editor Pat Dougherty, the media didn't even care to report about these stunning revleations any more. It was fascinating as well as frightening to discover in those emails how Sarah Palin and her camp tried to bully and intimidate the Anchorage Daily News, with only one goal in mind: Make them stop asking questions about the Trig pregnancy. In the end, that's what Palin's soldiers in the Governor's office achieved.

Many posts have been published about Sarah Palin's pregnancy by bloggers who only wanted to report the facts, and were not intimidated by anyone. In honour of the fourth anniversary of Sarah Palin's "Wild Ride", I would like conclude this post with an excerpt of a post about the "Wild Ride" which I posted at Palingates in September 2010.

Let me also say that I am grateful for the "Wild Ride." It opened the way for many good things which happened afterwards, and without it, we wouldn't be here today. Luckily, even without the public revelation of Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy, she has been thoroughly defeated, and in fact decided to leave the battle before it even began.

The whole story could have very well turned out differently. However, thanks to citizens, bloggers as well as authors who spent many months, sometimes even years researching Sarah Palin's life and dealings, trying to expose the "true" Sarah Palin, she ultimately had to bail out, as far too many dark secrets were lurking in the background. That's my opinion, but you probably won't find this version of events in the history books. "Officially", it were Katie Couric and Tina Fey who defeated Sarah Palin.

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Sarah Palin's "Wild Ride" on April 17, 2008 - The ultimate video, in Sarah's own words

Sarah Palin's "wild ride", her flight back from Texas to Alaska on April 17, 2008, was a crucial event, which had consequences that surely nobody could have foreseen at the time.

Four days after the "wild ride", on April 21, 2008, Sarah Palin gave a press conference to reporters in Alaska (those were the days...) and presented a story to them which simply was very hard to believe. According to Sarah, her water had broken in Texas in the early morning of the 17th April. Her reaction was to call her family doctor in Alaska, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, ask her for advice over the telephone, then give a speech at the RGA conference in Dallas later during the day, and go on a 12-hour to fly home. She then officially gave birth to Trig on the early morning of 18th April, 2008 - about 24 hours after her water had broken.

No hospital or doctor in Dallas was graced with Sarah's presence. The fact that Sarah Palin officially was in her seventh pregnancy (including of two miscarriages), did not prompt her to see a medical professional in Dallas, after her water had broken, at 35 weeks pregnant.

As one of the most importance consequences of Sarah's "wild ride" story, people in- and outside of Alaska started to doubt that Sarah Palin was telling the truth about her pregnancy story - including later several journalists immediately after Sarah Palin's nomination, as was revealed in the "JournoList" emails.

At Palingates, we have extensively written about the details of the "wild ride" - for example HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Listen to Sarah Palin's description of Trig's birth, in her own words, during the press conference from April 21, 2008 (complete recording):

Today, we have news. Our reader lidia17, who already created two amazing videos about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy, got active for us again and made another video which we have all been waiting for: Sarah Palin's "wild ride" - in her own words, but contrasting the TWO versions that Sarah Palin tried to "sell" to the public!

In the clip, Sarah's taped press conference from April 21, 2008 is contrasted with the story told in "Going Rogue" in 2009, which is also "on tape", because it was published also via audio book.

However, additional material has been included in this video. For example, emails of Sarah Palin's administration which were written at the time shortly before and "during" the "wild ride" in April 2008 give further insights into the highly suspicious circumstances of this trip to Texas. These emails were only published much later, mostly in 2010.

Here is the clip:

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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.