ST. PAUL – The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.
Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.
Palin asks for privacy for her daughter, and says that McCain knew of the pregnancy before picking her.
I have no end of questions about this as the timing doesn’t jibe with any of the speculation I’ve been cheerfully indulging in, but IF things are as Palin is now saying, then there are many questions about the wisdom of Palin pursuing a full-time campaign schedule in the final months of her pregnancy, and her apparently having lied to Alaska Airlines employees after her water broke in Texas.
The Independent is the only other news source on this, and their information appears to be based on the Reuters account as well.
Incredible! Wikipedia already has been updated:
The couple have five children: sons Track (19) and Trig (4 months) and daughters Bristol (17), who Governor Palin announced was pregnant, and will marry the father, Willow (14) and Piper (7) [ages as of August 2008].[111] Palin’s son Track enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 11, 2007, subsequently joining an infantry brigade, and Palin has said he will be deployed to Iraq on September 11, 2008.[112][113] Eldest daughter Bristol is pregnant.[114] Palin’s youngest child, Trig, has Down syndrome. Palin has said that she feel blessed that God chose them to raise a Down syndrome baby.[115] The pro-life community has applauded her decision to have the baby.[116]
Palin’s announcement that she was seven months pregnant generated publicity and surprise, as did the circumstances of Trig’s birth:[117] More than a month before the baby was due, she was about to deliver the keynote address at a conference in Texas when she began leaking amniotic fluid. Several hours later, she delivered the speech. She then flew eight hours to Alaska, and drove a further 50 minutes to Mat-Su Valley Regional Medical Center, where she gave birth seven hours later.[118] She returned to work three days later.[31]
Daughter’s Pregnancy
On Monday, September 1, 2008 Sarah Palin announced that her daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant, and intends to marry the father of her child.[119] [120] [121] John McCain was aware of the situation, but decided that it would not affect his choice of Palin as his vice presidential nominee. [122]
UPDATE: From Gawker:
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So, the question is, if Bristol wasn’t carrying Sarah’s child, when who was? Surely not Willow!
My (non-existent) god, it’s literally turned into a soap opera!
Continuing down the soap opera theme, my mean-spirited guess is that Bristol did deliver Trig but then got immediately knocked-up again. So she’s preggers, but nowhere near 5 months. Alas, the election will be over before the truth is known.
So, did she get “with child” again just because she’s, well, easy. Or did Sarah force her into it to act as cover when the Trig scandal broke?
It’s too weird to speculate about. Bristol is most assuredly not doing a doubleheader as Tryg was born only a few months ago and Bristol is allegedly five months pregnant.
Wikipedia is already more up to date than 99% of the newspapers.
I’ll bet you they name this one Trap.
Oh, but then again, it could be Bristol will suddenly “lose” this baby (due to the horrible, mean lefty bloggers nastiness, no doubt).
Seriously, at this point Sarah and Tryg need to have some blood work done because this is all just too fishy for words.
Exactly. We’re told she’s 5 months along. But we were told Iraq had WMD, too.
I’m always amazed at how quickly Wikipedia gets updated. My only contribution to date was a little factoid in the Motorhead entry. (Which is no longer there, alas.)
Oh, but then again, it could be Bristol will suddenly “lose” this baby (due to the horrible, mean lefty bloggers nastiness, no doubt).
Call me cynical, but that was my first thought, as well.
Regardless, I’ll bet there’s one hell of a dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship in that family. It’s very sad.
As Gustav winds down this is just cranking up.
This admission of Bristol’s pregnancy is the result of a rushed late night strategy. It smells that way, anyway.
I wouldn’t be suprised if a totally new ticket comes out of this.
No McCain, no Palin. The future is at stake, since the present has completely crashed.
Maybe a revolution inside the Republican party. A form of coup de tat.
Much is being hidden behind the radar swirl of Gustav and that fig leaf has just about played out.
Good name, autoegocrat, Trap, so appropriate.
I know this is so much fun for everyone, but really, does it matter? My concern is that I do not want another idiot running this country, so in that light it may have some context, but….kids do what they want and you can not control them. Of course I am assuming the father of Bristol’s baby is another teenager, not an adult (relative or not) who should know much, much better.
Has anybody looked at the date on Tryg’s birth certificate?
Because as St Peggy of Noonan so wisely said: It would be irresponsible NOT to speculate.
It’s not medically possible for Bristol to be five months pregnant as Trig was born in April.
It is, however, quite possible that Bristol is NOT pregnant now, and will suddenly have a miscarriage before the press notes the lack of a growing baby bump.
I did check and having mono when you get knocked up isn’t associated with birth defects, and it would compound the mono, possibly keeping her out of school longer than anticipated.
This story isn’t about Bristol. It’s about a control freak wingnut mom, and I still think Bristol is Trig’s baby because too many details have come out that contradict any other timeline.
And yes, I feel really bad for Bristol because either way she’s being humiliated by her mother who either 1) pretended to give birth to Trig to spare the family negative media attention, or 2) accepted the Veep nod knowing it would put her secretly pregnant daughter under a spotlight.
“It’s not medically possible for Bristol to be five months pregnant as Trig was born in April.”
Duh. Thank you, Dr.T Miss. What’s your doctorate in, again? Stating the Obvious, wasn’t it?
I’m pretty convinced that Bristol is Tryg’s mother, and if Bristol is actually pregnant now, there’s no way she could be 5 months along, unless Tryg was actually born a month or two earlier and they’ve fudged the official date of birth.
Either way, it’s private, or should be. It’s private family business.
But leaving Bristol completely out of this, I can and will question the judgment of a 43-yr-old woman who would make a conscious decision to try for baby #5 when she knew or OUGHT to have known about the increased odds of having a Downs Syndrome baby for mothers over the age of 40.
And then, already knowing that she’s got a pregnancy fraught with complications, and knowing how labor and delivery is usually FASTER after a woman’s already had a couple babies, after she began leaking amniotic fluid in Texas, she decides to stay in Texas for several more hours in order to give a speech, and then and only then takes an 8-hour flight back to Alaska, followed by a 50-minute drive to her local hospital?
That’s some freakin’ awesome judgment, Gov Babycakes!
Anything I left in the oven that long, got burned.
Flow chart of Palin’s decision-making process:
http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/4628/sarahpalinla4.png
That’s the odd thing. The pregnancy stuff is weird and makes for fun tawdry posts. But it’s the decisions made assuming Palin *did* give birth to Trig that are more troubling.
Kids get pregnant. Good kids. Bad kids. Republican kids. Democrat kids. Rich kids. Poor kids.
But delaying a risky delivery until you fly home to friggin’ Alaska?
An interesting thing to ponder is how the coverage would differ if her husband was running and she was just along on the trip.
I think I need a T-shirt that says “Gov Babycakes.”
That flow-chart is absolutely spot-on. Do you know who made it? I just heard it’s really making the rounds around the intertubes today.
have little to say, except; What a bunch of stupid-ass names she and her husband gave those kids.
Any thoughts that if Bristol is actually pregnant the “young man in question” might be guilty of statutory rape? Age of consent in Alaska is 16 but when was Bristol’s 17th birthday? Yikes! This could get juicy!
The whole scenario fits together logically like this:
Bristol originally got pregnant last fall not by the boy they are now claiming to be the current father, but by a full-blooded Inuit or Eskimo. Bristol insisted on having an abortion, but her mother forbade her. Bristol ended up agreeing to have the baby under two conditions: 1. She would stay home from school until the baby was born, and 2. Her mother would claim that the child was actually hers. This second condition actually was a stone that killed two birds, since it would explain the baby’s squinty-eyed appearance, since they could say that because Sarah is an older mother, the baby has Down’s syndrome. Some years later, of course, it will turn out that the baby doesn’t have Down’s syndrome — but that could just be chalked up as another “miracle.”
So far, so good. We all know that Bristol stayed home those five months, and Sarah claimed to have miraculously given birth to a baby, even though she hasn’t looked pregnant beforehand.
Then, last Sunday morning, because of Sarah’s nomination has McCain’s VP, the bloggers started surmising most of the truth. Sarah, Bristol and their family and cohorts looked like they were going to be caught in their lie, so as a last-ditch effort they claimed that Bristol was five months pregnant. This apparently solves the problem, since if this were true Bristol could never have given birth to Trig (so-named because of the one son and two-mother triangle).
Just one more lie, to cover up the whole preceding string. This one seems to be working. Even the bloggers seem to have mostly fallen off from the track. Later, it will turn out that Bristol will have “unfortunately” miscarried the baby. But that won’t be until after the election in November.
Have the Republican strategists already scheduled Bristol Palin’s miscarriage?
Killing two birds with one stone? I’m thinking the ‘tragic event’ will be announced close to the end of September, in hopes of derailing the much anticipated Palin / Biden Debate set for October 2 in Saint Louis.
Or possibly something with a bit more flair for the dramatic – a very timely car accident could easily be staged, with the obvious results. I can almost see the press release: “Bristol Palin today was a passenger in a minor car accident. We thank God that Bristol was not seriously injured. The latest reports confirm that her injuries are not life threatening. Sadly, her baby was lost… The family could not be reached for comment. Our deepest sympathies go out to the Palin family. Bristol will (again) be in seclusion until her injuries are fully healed.”
Going one step further – I suppose she could conceivably ‘carry’ it full term, (well past the election) by already having a paid-off Surrogate mother waiting in the wings – also five-months pregnant…
In any case – the Democrats or skeptics will be unable to question the facts without looking like heartless politicians. It would be too easy for the Republican Spin Machine to turn it around.
Let’s take a look at the story so far – some fact – some speculation – and ask a few obvious questions:
1) As Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin was Alaska’s supreme advocate of “abstinence-only” education.
2) When Sarah’s 17-year old daughter, Bristol, became pregnant, to save face, Sarah was forced to fake a pregnancy of her own.
3) Bristol Palin was pulled from school and kept in quarantine for five months due to a severe case of Mononucleosis – amidst the speculation that she was actually pregnant, and not Sarah.
4) Mononucleosis is only contagious for a very short period of time; thus a five-month quarantine was not necessary.
a) If Bristol had actually been bedridden with Mononucleosis, wouldn’t the Palin family have made their daughter easily accessible to the media to quell all of the suspicions?
b) If no one was allowed to visit her during her recovery, how did her ‘boyfriend’ have an opportunity to get her pregnant for her ‘recently announced’ pregnancy?
c) If Bristol’s Mononucleosis was so contagious, should the ‘then pregnant’ Sarah Palin have been exposed to her on a daily basis?
5) Everything is going along just fine until Sarah’s (or was it Bristol’s?) water breaks during Sarah’s trip to Texas for the Republican Governor’s Energy Conference.
a) She still manages to deliver her keynote address at the conference, then calls her doctor in Alaska regarding her other ‘delivery.’
b) Instead of delivering the baby in Texas, her doctor suggests that she fly back to Alaska (for eight hours, plus an hour drive) to have the baby in seclusion.
c) Is this wise advice from any doctor caring for a patient with a high-risk pregnancy?
d) Is this a wise decision from a woman who values the life of an unborn child above everything else?
6) Neither before nor during the flight, does Sarah tell any other passenger or the aircraft’s staff about her condition or that her ‘water broke’ and that she is in labor.
a) No one on the plane notices that Sarah is having contractions or that her contractions are getting closer together.
b) Would it even be possible for any woman to sit quietly on a plane for eight hours through the beginning stages of labor?
c) How many pencils did she chew through in an effort to remain seated and quiet on the flight?
7) Sarah sites the reason for flying back to Alaska for the delivery as the ‘substandard’ hospitals in Texas.
a) Are we to assume that she felt the medical facilities and the stewards assigned to the First Class Lounge on a commercial jetliner, flying at 35,000 feet, for eight hours, were superior to the hospitals and care that she would have received in Texas?
b) It seems more plausible that her reason behind her ‘panic flight’ back to Alaska was a call from Bristol, who was actually in labor (which has got to be the quintessential bad-timing phone call of all time.)
c) It might be interesting to see how long Sarah was actually in labor with her previous four deliveries.
d) Remarkably, three days later, Sarah returns to work and, shortly after that, Bristol is once again out in public, after her full recovery from Mono.
8) There is still a lot of speculation on who was actually pregnant, but it soon settles down and life goes on as usual.
9) Enter McCain.
10) After an abbreviated vetting process and a couple short face-to-face meetings, Sarah Palin is selected as his running mate due to her radical Right-wing Conservative views.
11) Overnight, her small-town (who’s your mama) controversy hits the national and international stages.
12) The Republicans quickly realize that their limited vetting of the candidate failed to realize that this controversy had not yet been put to rest.
a) Reporters and speculators are now digging deeper into Sarah Palin’s background than ever before.
b) McCain’s bid for the Presidency is nearly derailed… The controversy won’t go away.
c) What to do… What to do?
13) Fake another pregnancy – but this time it will be Sarah’s daughter, Bristol.
14) With a little quick math, the magic number comes up. Bristol is five months pregnant.
a) At five months, there would be no way that she could have been Trig’s mother.
b) The only logical explanation is, Sarah must have been the target of a smear campaign all along.
c) It’s the lesser of two evils – Sarah will now have to admit that her daughter actually is pregnant, but the controversy surrounding Trig’s birth mother will be put to rest once and for all.
d) The Republicans will even be able to turn it around to showcase the Palin’s ‘family values.’
e) Now they can get on with the campaign.
15) So the Republican strategists, in a last-ditch effort, decide to throw Bristol to the wolves.
16) The fate of the Presidency, as well as the future of the Republican Party now rests squarely on the shoulders of a 17-year old ‘pregnant’ girl.
17) Enter the boyfriend, Levi Johnston. A self-proclaimed redneck who will ‘kick your a_s and loves to shoot s_ _t, who doesn’t want kids. (As per his MySpace page.)
a) Suddenly he becomes Bristol’s devoted fiancée and – it goes without saying – they will keep their child.
b) When McCain meets Levi with Bristol for the first time, McCain’s body language clearly appears more like ‘thank you for doing this for the party and our country’ than ‘it’s nice to meet you.’
18) Continuing with a little more math, a five-month pregnancy would drop the ‘conception process’ squarely within the five months Bristol was battling Mononucleosis.
a) I guess this would mean that she did indeed have at least one visitor while she was in seclusion, recovering from Mono.
b) At this point, you have to be asking yourself, “What young girl would take even a billion to one chance of getting pregnant – after going through five months of public speculation over an earlier pregnancy scandal that involved both her and her mother?”
I think in the best interest of both parties, Bristol Palin should submit to a quick and painless pregnancy test with two female physicians present – one selected by the Republicans and one selected by the Democrats.
Let’s have the test done quickly – before the baby is ‘miscarried’ or a victim of a very unfortunate ‘accident.’
Let’s not wait to learn about another obscure Alaskan tradition of cremating miscarried or stillborn infants within 20 minutes of the horrific event.
Bristol’s already in the public eye, and this simple test would put this controversy to rest once and for all.
I for one, think that the timing of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is a little too convenient.