Sarah Palin gushes over Donald Trump in highly anticipated interview
Sarah Palin gushes over Donald Trump in highly anticipated interview
Sarah Palin and Donald Trump showered one another with compliments Friday night during a highly anticipated interview on the One America News Network.
“I’ve said it since the day he made the sacrifice to hit the campaign trail: Voters crave the anti-status-quo politician,” Palin said as she introduced the billionaire businessman-turned-surprise republican frontrunner. “They want results. They need a fighter. They need someone to fire all those political [sic] correct police.”
Trump’s campaign, Palin continued, is a movement. “The ‘Trumpeters,’ ‘Trumpservatives’ are what these folks are called,” she said. “Everything about Donald Trump’s campaign, it’s avant-garde. He is crushing it in the polls.”
She described the real estate mogul — who made his reputation as a ruthless CEO and often touts his own financial success on the campaign trail, making it a centerpiece of his stump speeches — as a candidate who is focused on the working class, and called on Trump to give viewers the kind of hard truths about the economy that she said the White House won’t.
The former Alaska governor, onetime vice presidential candidate and ex-Fox News contributor revealed that she’d be interviewing Trump on the evening show “On Point,” where she has been guest hosting this week, in a Facebook post on Friday. The post was less an announcement of her big get — the first mention of the interview was buried several lines in — but an excoriation of the “lamestream media” for unfairly hitting GOP candidates with “spiritual ‘gotchas’ that they’d NEVER ask Hillary.”
But word of the sure-to-be-entertaining interview spread so quickly that hours before the show was scheduled to air, the cable network’s website had already crashed under a stampede of eager viewers.
The spiritual gotcha that had inspired Palin’s screed was asked during an interview with Bloomberg Politics reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann this week. Trump declined the reporters’ request to share a favorite line of scripture from the Bible — which he has repeatedly referred to as his favorite book.
“I wouldn’t want to get into it, because to me that’s very personal,” Trump said at the time. When asked whether he preferred the Old Testament or New Testament, Trump replied, “Uh, probably … equal. I think it’s just an incredible, the whole Bible is incredible.”
To some, Trump’s response suggested that he might not be as familiar with the Good Book as he’d like voters to believe. To Palin, Trump was “screwing with the reporter” for asking such a personal question.
Trump seemed slightly less insulted by the questions than Palin, conceding that he had, in fact, publicly professed his adoration for the Bible and added, “Frankly, I don’t know if they’re fair questions or not fair questions.”
He didn’t refuse the softball from Palin, however, saying, “I don’t know if it’s [a] gotcha, but [it] probably is. … That’s a very personal thing; I don’t like giving that out to two people you hardly know.”
Speaking of “idiots in the press,” Palin also patted Trump on the back for ousting popular Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a recent press conference in which Ramos challenged Trump on his immigration promises.
“You schooled that radical activist, and it was the right thing to do, because I don’t think he’s going to pull that again,” said Palin, apparently unaware of Ramos’ Rottweiler tendencies. “Where do you get your guts for that kind of necessary confrontation?”
While Trump said Ramos was “totally out of line, screaming and ranting and raving”— noting that he is currently suing Univision for $500 million and that Ramos’ daughter works for his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton — he said, “Frankly, Sarah, the press was pretty good to me on that — I mean, they agreed with what I did.”
Palin gushed, “You’re pretty gracious when it comes to treating the press the way that sometimes they’re not gonna treat us conservatives.”
But the love fest wasn’t totally one-sided. Trump closed out the interview by telling Palin, whose name he has previously floated as a potential running mate, “I have to tell you, you are a terrific person and it’s great to be with you.”
Trump wasn’t Palin’s only only high-profile interview Friday night. Fellow Republicans Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush caught a few softballs of their own on the topics of religious liberty, planned parenthood and Hillary Clinton’s ongoing email scandal. But while Palin seemed pleased to dole out praise to the other presidential contenders, it was pretty clear who she was the most excited to share the screen with.
