28 seconds ago 2009-07-05T08:44:43-07:00
Under pressure for being shielded for questioning, Sarah Palin has a agreed to sit down with Charles Gibson of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” according to an ABC News official.
No other interviews are scheduled. It will be the first TV interview for Palin since she was named 10 days ago as running mate to John McCain.
Palin had planned to return to Alaska this weekend but is so popular on the stump that she is going to stay out a few more days before returning home. One of her sons deploys to Iraq on Thursday.
Palin plans to sit down with Gibson later this week in Alaska, the source said.
The McCain campaign kept her off Sunday shows this weekend and plans to be sparing with high-risk network encounters, which they contend are unimportant to voters despite the media’s fixation on them.
But McCain officials could see her reticence was feeding the narrative of her being unprepared for the job.
Joe Biden of Delaware, her counterpart on the Democratic ticket, challenged her Sunday to submit to network questioning.
“She's a smart, tough politician,” Biden told Tom Brokaw in a “Meet the Press” interview live from Wilmington, Del. “So I think she's going to be formidable. Eventually, she's going to have to sit in front of you like I'm doing and have done. Eventually, she's going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered. Eventually, she's going to have to answer on the record.”
