Todd Palin Offered Bristol a New Car in Exchange for Dumping Levi Johnston

Sometimes it's no fun being a dad. Your kids grow up and make mistakes, and all you can do is sit by and watch. Just ask Todd "First Dude" Palin, the snow mobile racer and husband of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. His daughter Bristol, as you may know by now, recently gave birth to an out-of-wedlock child whose father was one Levi "Sex on Skates" Johnston. The couple, of course, made their debut on the national stage during the last election, when Bristol was still pregnant, and the hand-holding couple seemed destined for a happy life together.

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Prominently featured at campaign stops and at the Republican National Convention, the wholesome, big-happy-family image of Palin-Johnston union turned out to be just a tad overdone. In fact, as GQ magazine reveals in its new issue when the facade began to crumble, Todd Palin is said to have repeatedly offered to buy his daughter a car if she'd dump Levi once and for all. Politics Daily was given a look at John Jerimiah Sullivan's evocative look inside the Johnston's Alaska life, including his favorite pastime: Hunting.

On this subject, at least, he certainly saw eye-to-eye with Sarah and Todd Palin. But when it came to his relationship with their daughter, Johnston says he often received mixed messages. Asked by Sullivan whether Palin's parents pressured her to break up with Levi, Johnston responded:

I know that her parents didn't want us together. I really don't think they did. So they probably put a little pressure on her. But at the same time, they told us they wanted us to get married when they found out Bristol was pregnant. Whether they put pressure on her for the breakup--I don't know what the deal was.

Still, he asserts, the car bribe definitely happened. There's no mention of what model and make Bristol's father may have offered in exchange for ditching Levi, and by now, car or no car, we know that couple's much anticipated wedding is definitely off. And no longer do Levi and Bristol see eye-to-eye on the question on whether abstinence is a realistic course of action, as a series of conflicting television interviews has made clear.

But is the car story true? Could Todd Palin be so crass as to offer a material reward for the severing of ties between his daughter and his grandson's father? The GQ bombshell is largely constructed from interviews with Levi, so take it with a grain of salt. Though Levi and Bristol still get along well enough to exchange flirtatious text messages, Johnston's relationship with the in-laws is anything but warm.


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