Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, said Friday on Fox News that “attempts to destroy the whistleblowers” within the John McCain campaign meant that she was banned from talking about Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright during the 2008 presidential election campaign.

“Though I was, during the campaign, running for VP, I was banned from talking about Jeremiah Wright and [then-Sen. Barak] Obama’s friend Bill Ayers,” Mrs. Palin told host Greta Van Susteren.

“Couldn’t talk about that. Couldn’t talk about Obama’s lack of knowledge, and job inexperience, and the things that he said, like America had 57 states, things like that,” she continued. “This is important for Americans to understand. I was not allowed to talk about things like that because those elitists, those who are the brainiacs in the GOP machine running John McCain’s campaign at the time, said that the media would eat us alive if we brought up these things.”

Mrs. Palin added that “complacency” and “self-censoring” within the McCain campaign meant “we weren’t allowed to tell the truth about who the candidate was, Barack Obama.”

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