Geoffrey Dunn
Author and filmmaker

American Backstab: Sarah Palin's Second Betrayal of John McCain

Posted: 07/21/2015 10:45 am EDT Updated: 07/21/2015 10:59 am EDT

Leave it to the quitter governor Sarah Palin -- she of the continued snake-oil peddling in American politics -- to pretend to come down in the middle of what is a very real and ugly schism in the Republican Party fueled by Donald Trump's shameful attack on former GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

It's another Palin con job: She's nowhere in the middle of the road on this one; she's in a ditch somewhere to the right side of demagoguery -- clearly siding with Trump and chastising McCain for his criticisms of Trump and those who support his racist rhetoric.

Trump's assault on McCain's military career over the weekend -- in which he derisively mocked McCain's five-and-half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam ("I prefer people who aren't captured)" -- marked one of the lower blows in what is a decidedly low-blow political career. Trump has been eviscerated by those across the political spectrum who have rightfully noted that the horrific conditions endured by McCain -- and others who were forced into similar fates -- make him an American hero. Many have called for Trump to pull out of the race.

Not so Palin. She used the controversy as a way to signal her support of Trump's candidacy by declaring that "Donald Trump is a hero in another arena."

"Trump is the candidate giving voice to untold millions of fed-up Americans witnessing a purposeful destruction of our economy and the equal opportunity for success that made America exceptional," Palin wrote in an email to CNN's resident Palin sycophant Jake Tapper (a mode which assured that she wouldn't have to face any open cross-examination of her views). "We're watching career politicians throw away our kids' future through bankrupting public budgets and ripping open our porous borders which, obvious to all us non-politicians, puts us at great risk."

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