MONROE, MI — Barack Obama responded forcefully to questions about the news that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol, 17, is pregnant, saying family issues should not be part of this campaign and noting that his own mother had him as a teen.
“Let me be a clear as possible,” he told reporters after speaking briefly at a Labor Day BBQ here. “I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and, you know, how a family deals with issues and you know teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who’s supporting me understands that’s off limits.”
Obama also strongly denied anyone involved in his campaign had been spreading rumors that McCain’s running mate had faked her pregnancy to hide her daughter’s — a story that caught fire over the last few days on liberal blogs — and said he was offended at the suggestion.
“There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us,” he said. “We don’t go after people’s families. We don’t get them involved in the politics. It’s not appropriate, and it’s not relevant. Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they’d be fired.”
National Journal