Alaska's quitter governor and the Tea Party's queen diva Sarah Palin uses her Facebook page to comment on all things political, including touting Donald Trump's candidacy for the presidency. But when it comes to Trump's outrageously sexist comments about her former colleague at Fox News, Megyn Kelly, Palin has remained shamefully silent about El Donaldo's latest round of misogyny.
So much for Mama Grizzly solidarity with conservative women like Kelly, with whom Palin once declared: "We are the women's movement!"
When Trump recently assaulted John McCain -- who plucked Palin from obscurity in August of 2008 to join him on the Republican ticket -- it was an entirely different matter. Palin immediately came to Trump's defense, calling him a hero and blaming the scuffle on the media. It was an act of betrayal directed at McCain -- and yet another instance of her blatant duplicity -- that only Palin could pull off.
Trump, of course, has been nothing more than a serial sexist when it comes to his constant attacks on women: He has called women "ugly," "fat," "dogs," "slobs," "bimbos," "extremely unattractive," ad infinitum, all leading up to his allegation this weekend that Kelly was menstruating during the Republican presidential primary debate Thursday tonight.
I guess in Palin World, that all makes you a "hero." So be it. But as virtually every major player in the current Republican line-up for president has called Trump on his latest remarks, Palin still hasn't brought herself to take the high road. Just before the Presidential debate last week, Palin gave yet another bizarre interview in which she said that she advised Trump [3:11]:
I've already told him. I said: Keep it up! America appreciates that you're calling it like you see it. He's telling a lot of truth. And really helping educate and lead the other candidates because they're going to have to step up their game and quit sounding like politicians.
I wonder what "truth" she thinks he's now telling?
In addition to being beholden to Trump -- he's the only current candidate, with the possible exception of Ted Cruz, who would ever utter her name publicly -- I've been told that there's some inside back-story to Palin's glaring lack of solidarity with Kelly. According to a source once in Palin's inner-circle in Southcentral Alaska, Palin was livid at Kelley two years ago when the latter interrupted Palin in an interview in which Palin went into what seemed like a crack-addled rant about Obama and the American economy.
No one holds a grudge like Palin. In June, Palin was overtly critical of Kelly for interviewing Jill Duggar Dillard and Jessa Duggar Seewald on her Fox News program. Two weeks later it was announced that Palin had been dumped from her position at Fox News.
That Palin is an exceedingly dull blade goes without saying, but even she must have noted the timing of Fox's decision.
Trump just blew some seriously needed oxygen into Palin's sinking political platform by indicating that Palin would serve in a cabinet-level capacity in his administration--which only someone with Palin's crazy could view as a possibility -- and for a brief moment it appeared that Palin's stock, depressed as it is, might yet have another bump in it.
Not so. The descending numbers from her political action committee and her utter disappearance from the national Republican debate fully indicate that Palin's political half-life has long since passed. She's been reduced to a laugh-line and an afterthought.
As I noted in my critical biography of her, The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind her Relentless Quest for Power, there is really no low to which Palin will not stoop to advance her own political and monetary interests. Her silence on the Kelly-Trump affair is par for the Palin course. When it comes to political courage and integrity, she has none.
--
Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn's best-selling The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power was published by Macmillan/St. Martin's in May of 2011.