Sarah Palin blames son’s arrest on PTSD, President Obama
Speaking to Donald Trump’s supporters one day after she endorsed him for president, Sarah Palin addressed her son’s recent arrest on domestic violence charges, suggesting it could be related to posttraumatic stress disorder from serving in Iraq and linking it to what she called President Obama’s lack of respect of war veterans.
“My son, like so many others — they come back a bit different,” Palin said at a rally in Tulsa, Okla., Wednesday. “They come back hardened.”
Palin’s son, Track Palin, was arrested at the family’s Wasilla, Alaska, home late Monday and charged with assault, interference with the reporting of a domestic violence crime and possession of a firearm while intoxicated after his girlfriend told police he punched and kicked her before threatening to kill himself with an AR-15 rifle. The 26-year-old, who served in Iraq in 2008, reportedly told police the incident began when he learned she had been in touch with an ex-boyfriend.
Track Palin was arraigned on those charges on Tuesday.
Sarah Palin on Tuesday; Track Palin in 2008. (Photos: Mary Altaffer/AP, Charles Rex Arbogast,/AP)
“They come back wondering if there is that respect for what their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military have given so sacrificially to this country, and that starts at the top,” Sarah Palin said. “It’s a shame that our military personnel even have to question, have to wonder if they’re respected anymore.”
The former Alaska governor continued: “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 and to secure the freedoms that have been bequeathed us?’”
“So when my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate with other families who kind of feel these ramifications of PTSD and some of the woundedness that our soldiers do return with,” she added. “And it makes me realize more than ever, it is now or never for the sake of America’s finest that we’ll have that commander in chief who will respect them and honor them.”
Reached by the Daily News, an attorney for the Palin family declined to comment, saying the family was seeking privacy “as Track receives the help that he and many of our returning veterans need.”