Sarah Palin sticks up for Donald Trump

Sarah Palin frequently complains that the media treats her unfairly. But this time, she’s sticking up for -- you guessed it -- Donald Trump.

Appearing Tuesday evening on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News, Palin said the press is “hammering” him on the Obama birth-certificate issue.

“He’s merely answering reporters’ questions about his view on the birth certificate and then reporters turn that around and saying that’s all he’s got,” the former Alaska governor said. “Donald Trump is running on the issue, bottom line, that President Obama is so far over his head.”

Hannity agreed, saying the media is more interested in pressing Trump on the birth-certificate issue than it was in uncovering the association between Obama, when he was an presidential candidate, and Bill Ayers, the 1960s radical turned academician.

“I do have respect for Donald Trump and his candidness,” Palin said--and she praised him for speaking at a tea-party rally last weekend.

(Trump, in turn, has said that he “really respects” Palin and that she, too, has been “unfairly treated.”)

Palin also urged congressional Republicans to fight attempts to raise the federal debt ceiling, and worried aloud whether they’ll have the backbone to do so. “If they don’t fight on that issue and they don’t fight going into the 2012 elections . . . we need to remember that losing is not an option or our country will be owned by foreign countries and we will be obviously less secure. We cannot afford to lose. We cannot afford to incur more debt,” the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee said.

“We need to fight. We need to fight so hard going to into 2012 to get somebody elected who has executive experience who hasn’t just been part of this herd mentality of trying to manage the public--the public doesn’t need to be managed and controlled--we need freedom, the private sector needs freedom,” Palin said. “So we can’t start giving in on things like these budget deals and increasing the debt ceiling and certainly not in these elections coming up.”

Asked about her own presidential ambitions, Palin said it was still “too early” to make a decision about entering the race.

She said forming an exploratory committee, as candidates such as Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney have done, is “not even on the radar.”

“It’s going to be an unconventional run if I so chose to do that,” she said.