The Palin fake pregnancy charge is back

A website, Sarah Palin’s Lies, takes up the argument, first made by The Daily Kos in late August, that Trig Palin is really the child of Bristol, and that Sarah Palin faked her own pregnancy and childbirth last spring to conceal the fact that Bristol was pregnant and gave birth to Trig. The charge is not as absurd and instantly dismissible as it sounds. There are extraordinary problems with the idea that Palin was pregnant earlier this year and gave birth to Trig under the circumstances as told, and the anti-Palin website lays out the case in a serious and intelligent way, considering all evidence. The extreme implausibility of the official story of Trig’s birth makes it necessary to consider seriously the charge that the official story is a lie. However, after considering once again the charge that Palin faked her pregnancy, I conclude that it is impossible to believe, for reasons I spell out in the below comment which I’ve been unable so far to post at Sarah Palin’s Lies:

I read the Daily Kos story on August 31-September 1 [see e-mails below]. I thought the questions raised on the basis of the photographic evidence and the extreme unlikelihood of Palin giving a speech and then flying back to Alaska with her amniotic fluid leaking were reasonable questions; and then and later I defended the Daily Kos blogger from the charge of sensationalism and scandal mongering. I thought he was asking reasonable questions that deserved to be answered.

You have now spelled out that the problems with Sarah Palin being the mother of Trig more thoroughly than was done back then. However, the theory that Palin faked her pregnancy and her giving birth to Trig, in order to cover up the fact that Bristol was pregnant and had given birth, is unbelievable now for the same reason it was unbelievable then.

If Palin faked her pregnancy and her giving birth to Trig, why would she have chosen such an extremely unlikely fake story—amniotic fluid leaking, giving her speech with the fluid leaking, then flying back to Alaska instead of going to a hospital in Texas—that has raised precisely the questions that have been raised? Why not simply fly home, and THEN claim to have gone into labor and simply drive to the hospital?

The idea that Palin would deliberately choose to invent the most complicated and extremely unlikely fake scenario, a scenario that casts her as almost insanely irresponsible, instead of a simpler and more likely fake scenario, seems more unlikely to me than that her story, as incredible as it is, is true.

And there is a second reason why the charge of a fake story is impossible.

To believe that her story is fake, we’d have to believe that Palin in March 2008 thought it was so mortifying for her 17 year old daughter to be pregnant that she invented an enormous lie, involving a fake pregnancy and fake childbirth, to cover it up, a lie that would discredit her forever if it was revealed. Yet this same Palin, who as mere Alaska governor in March 2008 had felt compelled to cover up her daughter’s real out-of-wedlock pregnancy, proceeded a few months later—as vice presidential nominee—to make up a FAKE story of her daughter being out-of-wedlock pregnant.

If she was willing for five billion people to think in September 2008 that the unmarried Bristol was pregnant, why would she have felt compelled in March 2008 to conceal Bristol’s pregnancy from 600,000 Alaskans—and by such involved, extreme means of pretending to be pregnant and pretending to give birth to a baby when she hadn’t?

You see? The whole thing makes no sense.

You argue that either Palin is telling the truth, in which case she behaved in a way that was wildly unrealistic and irresponsible, or that she faked the pregnancy and childbirth. I believe the only thing that makes sense here is that she is telling the truth about Trig’s birth and that she was wildly irresponsible and reckless in the 24 hours preceding Trig’s birth.

Let’s put it this way: that Palin gave birth under the circumstances as given in the news accounts is very hard to believe. That she faked the birth is impossible to believe. I choose to believe the almost completely incredible over the totally incredible.

Bottom line: She’s a gung-ho, can-do gal who “just does it,” and in this case she did something extremely irresponsible, something virtually impossible to believe, that fortunately worked out ok. But she’s not the cosmic liar and fraud she would have to be for the “Bristol-is-Trig’s-mother” story to be true.

[End of comment.]

Below is my initial response to the Daily Kos story on September 1. It was drafted for posting at VFR on September 2 but was never posted.

At 10:19 p.m. August 31, the night before Gov. Palin and the McCain campaign announced that Bristol Palin was pregnant, a move Palin said was necessitated by the need to disprove the rumor that Trig was really Bristol’s child, Daniel H. sent me a link to the Daily Kos entry charging that Trig was really Bristol’s baby:

For Sarah Palin’s sake only, I hope that this isn’t true. But the speculation is reasonable.

They better get on top of this right away.

In the early morning hours of Monday, September 1, I responded to Daniel in the following e-mails:

LA to Daniel H.:

I’ve read it. It’s too weird to take in.

Clearly Palin doesn’t look seven months pregnant in March 2008. But if they were concealing Bristol’s pregnancy, why would the family pose for a photo with Bristol wearing a skin tight shirt that brings out her pregnant-looking shape? It’s impossible.

The idea that Palin would engage in such a complicated scam, telling this huge lie, compromising her and her whole family for the rest of their lives, which could ruin her if it ever came out, rather than simply admitting it, seems impossible. All she would have had to do is announce, “My daughter made a very regrettable mistake, but the family is going to raise the child.” It’s something that’s happened a million times and will happen again.

At the same time, her slender appearance in March 2008 is undeniable.

Also, I must say that when I saw that great family photo of late 2007 the other day (before reading this current article), it occurred to me that Bristol looked rather full bodied.

LA to Daniel H.:

It is being discussed by conservatives at Lucianne and Townhall.

The Townhall item consists of an article followed by many comments. The article says:

Not only is the DailyKos disgustingly inspecting Bristol’s midriff with all the fervor of LA paparazzi examining J-Lo’s or Jennifer Aniston’s washboard stomachs for evidence of a “bump,” the DailyKos is wrong on when the photo was taken. It was taken, and published, by the Anchorage Daily News in 2006. Baby Trig, a child with Down’s Syndrome, was born on April 18, 2008. That’s a long time for a teen girl to be carrying a “bump” which looks nothing more than the curve of a tight sweater.

But that’s the only refutation of the Kos charges. The TownHall article is very brief.

LA continues:

I’ve been going through many of the comments following the TownHall article. No one discusses the facts, almost all of them just denounced the horrid, horrid left for making such awful, awful charges.

Once commenter pointed out meeting a nine-month pregnant woman in whom the signs of pregnancy could hardly be seen.

Several expressed consternation at Palin flying from Texas to Alaska after her water broke. One commenter suggested: but do we know that her water had broken? What’s the source for that?

- end of initial entry -

Doug E. writes:

Here’s another reason to suspect this story is false. According to Wikipedia’s article on Down syndrome:

Maternal age influences the chances of conceiving a baby with Down syndrome. At maternal age 20 to 24, the probability is one in 1562; at age 35 to 39 the probability is one in 214, and above age 45 the probability is one in 19. Although the probability increases with maternal age, 80% of children with Down syndrome are born to women under the age of 35, reflecting the overall fertility of that age group. Recent data also suggest that paternal age, especially beyond 42, also increases the risk of Down Syndrome manifesting in pregnancies in older mothers.

Clark Coleman writes:

You have not pursued a pretty standard line of analysis of this kind of story. Namely, the Daily Kos story was a conspiracy theory. Most conspiracy theories are unbelievable because of the large number of people who would have to keep a secret. Some conspiracy theories, upon further analysis, only require that a few conspirators would have to keep a secret, and those few would suffer greatly if the secret were leaked, so we can consider such theories at least plausible. Most conspiracy theories require an ever-widening circle of secret keepers, many of whom have no urgent need to keep the secret, and hence are not plausible.

In order for the Trig-was-born-to-Bristol conspiracy theory to hold true, who was have to keep the secret? First, just about every member of the Palin family would have to be in on it. Of course, they might have good motivations for secrecy. But teenagers blab secrets a little too easily. Second, everyone at Bristol’s school would have the opportunity to see her from the time she was two months pregnant (in late August, 2007, when the school year started) up until the date of Trig’s birth, and then immediately thereafter. They would have to fail to notice the gradual physical changes in Bristol right up to the day of birth, but then also not notice the sudden change when she returned to school. Or, they would all have to be in on the conspiracy of silence, not talking to any of the reporters who descended on Alaska this year. Administrators, teachers, and schoolmates, some of whom probably liked Bristol and some of whom did not, all in on the conspiracy of silence, or all of them cluelessly not noticing. Then, Bristol cannot get a couple of days off from school to have the baby and recover, else her absence would trigger suspicions. (What day of the week was Trig born on?) [LA replies: But Bristol left her school and went elsewhere for a few months; that was one of the factors that fueled the theory.]

Finally, we get all the people who observe Sarah Palin for nine months, including those on her speaking trip, and the circle widens to include everyone at the hospital where Trig was born.

We really don’t need to spend any more time on such lunacy.

LA replies:

Of course it would be impossible to organize such a conspiracy and keep it hidden. But the Daily Kos article and now this new website have not been focused on how such a trick could have been played. They’ve been focused on the many extraordinary facts that bring into reasonable question Sarah Palin’s pregnancy and her giving birth to Trig. The fact is that Palin’s behavior and that of her doctor in the 24 hours preceding Trig’s birth is, as I said, virtually incredible. That’s why I did not simply dismiss and denounce the theory, as most conservatives did. I felt that the questions deserved a thoughful response.

The main article at the “Palin Lied” site is not the article of a conspiracy nut, but of a person who is rationally looking at the facts.

Clark Coleman replies:

The page you linked to is certainly interesting and well reasoned. My response is that we will find out in the next 12 months. If no one spills the beans in the next 12 months, it is the most successful public conspiracy kept secret that I can think of, or else Trig really was born to Sarah Palin. We will see.

LA replies:

I don’t need to be convinced of that! Please note that I said that the Bristol-is-Trig’s-mother conspiracy theory is not just unlikely, but absolutely impossible.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 20, 2008 10:22 AM | Send