Palin links her son’s troubles to Obama’s care for veterans
A day after her endorsement of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin hit the campaign trail with the billionaire businessman and sought to link President Obama’s treatment of veterans to the recent arrest of her son on a domestic violence charge.
Palin’s son Track, 26, was arrested this week in Alaska in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend said he had an AR-15 assault rifle and she was afraid he would shoot himself. Track Palin, an Army veteran, served in Iraq.
“Going through what we’re going through today with my son, a combat vet ... like so many others, they come back a bit different, they come back hardened,” Palin said at a rally alongside Trump in Tulsa, Okla. “They come back wondering if there is that respect for what their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military so sacrificially have given to the country.”
Palin, the 2008 vice presidential pick of Republican nominee John McCain, accused Obama of failing to provide veterans with adequate care.
“They have to question if they’re respected anymore. It starts from the top,” she said. “The question, though, that comes from our own president, where they have to look at him and wonder, ‘Do you know what we go through? Do you know what we’re trying to do to secure America?’ ”
Trump has made care for those who have served in the military a central talking point in his campaign, particularly since the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal in 2014, which centered on allegations that veterans had died waiting for care because of a logjam in appointments.
The endorsement from Palin is a boost to Trump, who is in a tight race with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to win Iowa. Palin, a former Alaska governor, has a strong following among evangelical voters, a key voting bloc in the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses.