‘Open door' Could Sarah Palin make a return to politics?

Removing a white facemask as she took to the witness stand behind a protective screen, Sarah Palin likened herself to the biblical David taking on the mighty Goliath of American media, the New York Times.

- David Smith

The 58-year-old’s appearance in a Manhattan courtroom last week was a far cry from her heyday on the campaign trail, whipping up crowds with incendiary rhetoric as a vice-presidential candidate in 2008. But in making her pitch to a jury she still had a star power, and the reflex for bashing the media, that served as a reminder of how she paved the way for Donald Trump.

When the former governor of Alaska was asked whether she might think about running for office again, she told the court: “The door’s always open.”

Anyone wondering, “Whatever happened to Sarah Palin?” has not been paying attention to headlines of late. She declared that she would get the coronavirus vaccine “over my dead body”, duly tested positive for Covid-19 and went dining out in New York anyway, flouting public health guidelines.

Her day in court was for a defamation trial against the New York Times, which published a 2017 editorial that incorrectly linked Palin to a mass shooting six years earlier. It corrected the editorial the following day but she contend ed that the correction did not go far enough.