Joe McGinniss, author of The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, is responding to criticism from some reviewers who call the book "unsubstantiated gossip" and a "hatchet job." McGinniss isn't backing down, and ca
"She's a threat to our way of our way of life and that's the point of my book."
Joe McGinniss is not backing down from the explosive revelations in his new book The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin.
In the book he claims Sarah had an affair with her husband's business partner (which he denies), that she once experimented with cocaine, and that she had a one-night stand with a basketball star before she was married.
"Your book reads like a gossip column. It's full of juicy tidbits about Sarah Palin and her wardrobe, her parenting skills, her sex life, her alleged drug use, and most of this stuff does come from anonymous sources. How can you be sure that any of it is true?" INSIDE EDITION's Paul Boyd asked.
"They have to be anonymous because the Palins have created such a climate of fear in Wasilla that people were simply afraid to go on the record and talk about her and tell the truth," said McGinniss.
One of those anonymous sources told McGinniss that Sarah once snorted cocaine during a snowmobiling trip: "It was me, Todd, Sarah, five or six other people...Somebody found a fifty-five-gallon drum and turned it upside down and we were all doing cocaine lines off the top of the drum."
Boyd asked, "Is it really fair to use an anonymous source for such an explosive allegation that could do so much harm to this woman and her family, regardless of your political leanings?"
"She's a public figure who tries to present an image of being a perfect Christian mother and she tells other people how to live their lives so I think it's relevant to show people how she has in some part lived her own. That's what proves that she's a hypocrite, that's what proves that she's a fraud," explained McGinniss.
The book also takes aim at the Palins' marriage. McGinniss says a source told him, "It's never been a happy marriage. They don't have a marriage." Another source claims that Todd complained constantly that he and Sarah never had sex. Todd says the book is filled with "disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears."
"Newsweek called your book an 'unremitting hatchet job.' The New York Times called it 'caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.' What do you make of these unfavorable reviews?" asked Boyd.
"If you're writing about a public person, and you tell the truth in a way that it's never been told before, you have to expect that there's going to be some negative reaction. Sarah Palin has been portrayed pretty much only one way up until now and I finally think I've succeeded in getting behind the mask and showing the difference between the image that she's projected and the reality that lies behind it," said McGinniss.
