Tag: Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps giving, and giving and giving…

The former half-term governor of Alaska insisted Sunday that history was on her side when she claimed that Paul Revere’s famous Massachusetts ride was intended to warn both British soldiers and his fellow colonists.

“You realize that you messed up about Paul Revere, don’t you?” “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace asked the potential 2012 presidential candidate.

“I didn’t mess up about Paul Revere,” replied Palin, a paid contributor to the network.

“Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there. That, hey, you’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual, private militia that we have,” she added. “He did warn the British.”

Memo to Palin: no – you’re wrong.

Palin was asked in Boston on Thursday about the Revolutionary War hero during a stop on her East Coast bus tour. Her version of “history”:

“He who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms by ringing those bells, and makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

The Paul Revere House’s website says that on April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren instructed Revere to ride to Lexington, Mass., to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to arrest them.

Since then, as reported in Slate and Politico, among other sources, a battle has erupted on Wikipedia, where Palin’s supporters seemingly have been trying to edit the Paul Revere entry to be more in line with Palin’s defense of her remarks.

But hey, what do they know?

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests dating back to the 2008 presidential elections, Alaska is set to release more than 24,000 pages of emails sent and received by Sarah Palin during her governorship. The Anchorage Daily News reports that 2,415 pages are exempt from the request.

MSNBC reports the e-mails should be ready by June 10. The state, reports MSNBC, had at first said it would cost as much as $15 million for the records, but the Daily News says individuals and news organizations that requested the records will pay $725.97 in copying fees.

Part of the reason it’s taken so long for Alaska to retrieve and make email records public is because the former Alaska governor sent and received official email using a Yahoo account. The Daily News reports:

Technicians searched for those records by sifting through email accounts of more than 50 state employees, including Cabinet members, executive staff and close aides, to look for emails Palin sent or received from her personal account.

Riding onto the scene on the back of a Harley-Davidson, Sarah Palin made a dramatic entrance Sunday at a much-anticipated appearance with the Rolling Thunder bike rally in Arlington, Virginia, an early stop on her recently-launched national bus tour.

The annual motorcycle ride, part of a two-day effort by the Rolling Thunder nonprofit organization, means to draw attention to American troops who have gone missing in combat and remain unaccounted for. Hundreds of participants ride in support of the cause yearly.

Palin did not give a speech during her appearance, but said, when asked about the significance of the event, that it was important to honor men and women in uniform.

When asked whether or not she was planning to jump into the race, Palin said, “I don’t know yet.”

She and her family spent about 20 minutes shaking hands and taking photos with people in the crowd.

The former governor’s participation received mix reviews from Rolling Thunder organizers and participants, according to the Washington Post.

“It intimidates our people if we’re pro or con any particular candidate,” said Wayne Kirkpatrick, chairman of the board of an Illinois chapter of Rolling Thunder. “And until national says there’s a candidate we’re and supporting them, we don’t want to feel because the president of this chapter is pro-tea party, ‘Gee, I have to be our else I better get out of this organization.”

“Don’t come here and try to make a political point out of it,” said Joe Clark of Pennsylvania. “If she’s just here backing the cause of the entire run, that’s fine. If she’s just trying to get votes, she should just stay out of it.”

Mark Posey of Indiana agreed: “I think she has no reason the be involved in this,” he said. “If she’s launching her campaign to run for president, I don’t think this is the place to start.”

“I don’t think she has any business having anything to do with Rolling Thunder. It’s not a political statement, so to speak. It’s not a Republican or a Democrat thing,” said Denise Throckmorton, who lives outside of Pittsburgh.

Former Sarah Palin aide Frank Bailey opened up to “Extra” about the ex-Governor of Alaska with his thoughts on her possible run for the presidency. In his candid interview, Bailey revealed, “She would be an absolute disaster as President.”

The former member of Sarah Palin’s inner circle released a new tell-all titled, Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years.

The book details Frank’s four years with Palin, based on 50,000 emails he wrote or received as a campaign and administration staffer. Frank, standing by his claims, cites the insider emails as evidence that back his stories.

In “Blind Allegiance,” the author paints a portrait of a fame-hungry, erratic and unethical politician.

“She loves to play the victim. She cannot handle criticism.” He also addresses Palin’s family life and explained, “I frequently found myself in the middle of dysfunction between Todd Palin and Sarah Palin. Sarah would tell us, ‘Don’t trust Todd, be careful what you tell Todd… Todd talks.’

Frank sent a message to the politician at the end of his interview with “Extra”: “Look at the things you’ve done and look in the mirror. I’ve taken this painful step to own what I’ve done and I’d hope you can do the same.”

More on EXTRA

From RealClearPolitics: Shortly after Republicans swept last November to a historic victory in which Sarah Palin was credited with playing a central role, the former Alaska governor pulled aside her close aide, Rebecca Mansour, to discuss a hush-hush assignment: Reach out to conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon with a request.

Ask him if he would make a series of videos extolling Palin’s governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was this abdication, Palin knew, that had made her damaged goods in the eyes of some Republicans who once were eager to get behind her potential 2012 presidential campaign.

The response was more positive than Palin could have hoped for. He’d make a feature-length movie, Bannon told Mansour, and he insisted upon taking complete control and financing it himself — to the tune of $1 million.

The fruits of that initial conversation are now complete. The result is a two-hour-long, sweeping epic, a rough cut of which Bannon screened privately for Sarah and Todd Palin last Wednesday in Arizona, where Alaska’s most famous couple has been rumored to have purchased a new home.

When it premieres in Iowa next month, the film is poised to serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin’s prospective presidential campaign — an unconventional reintroduction to the nation that she and her political team have spent months eagerly anticipating, even as Beltway Republicans have largely concluded that she won’t run.

Read more here.