Sarah Palin says she didn’t know her daughter Bristol was sexually active before she learned the teenager was pregnant and was “shocked” and “devastated” by the news,
The former vice presidential candidate told ABC’s Barbara Walters: “Truthfully, we were devastated.”
Bristol was a high school senior when she gave birth to son Tripp in December. Her pregnancy was publicly announced just after Sarah Palin accepted John McCain’s invitation to be his running mate.
ABC released that exchange between Walters and Palin on Saturday. Portions of their interview begin airing Tuesday on “Good Morning America” and will be shown at length Friday on “20/20”. Palin is promoting her new book, “Going Rogue.”
In the book, Palin describes heart-wrenching anguish about her teen daughter’s pregnancy playing out before a national audience. But the 413-page tome doesn’t contain a single reference to the father of her grandson, soon-to-be nude online model Levi Johnston.
FACT CHECK: PALIN ‘ROGUE’ ON FACTS, TOO
She takes a few slaps at Katie Couric, calling the newswoman condescending, biased and “badgering,” and said the anchor chose “gotcha” moments while leaving the candidate’s more substantive remarks on the cutting room floor.
Palin bombed before a national audience on Couric’s show, when she couldn’t name a single newspaper she read.
The closest Palin comes to naming names occurs in the passages about chief McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt. Quoting another campaign official, she writes that Schmidt felt she wasn’t prepared enough on policy matters and even wondered if she was suffering from postpartum depression following the April 2008 birth of her son Trig, who has Down syndrome.
She says Schmidt was also upset if anyone in her personal circle tried to correct — without approval from the McCain camp — what they perceived to be incorrect portrayals of Palin’s record as Alaska governor.
Palin comes across as particularly upset about being stuck with $50,000 in legal bills that she says were directly related to the legal vetting process for the vice presidential slot. She says she was never informed that she would have to personally take care of expenses related to the selection process, and jokes that if she’d known she was going to get stuck with the bill, she would have given shorter responses.
According to the book, Palin asked officials at the Republican National Committee and what was left of the McCain campaign if they would help her financially. She says she was told that if McCain had won, the bills would have been paid, but since he lost, the bills were her responsibility.
Trevor Potter, the McCain campaign’s general counsel, told the AP the campaign never asked Palin to pay a legal bill.