O'REILLY: Let's begin with a phone call you actually made to me, to my house, in late October of 2008. We had been trying to get you on The Factor for months. Do you remember that?
PALIN: I do.
O'REILLY: You basically said, I want to do this show. But why didn't you do it?
PALIN: Whatever the logistics were that weren't working out, we ended up not doing the show, unfortunately.
O'REILLY: It's fair to say that you were over-controlled by the McCain people?
PALIN: They were the experts. They had run national campaigns before, and I had never been a participant in anything larger than a state campaign. So I obviously was having to put a lot of faith in their strategy, and not having a whole lot of say in things like the media roll out.
O'REILLY: Should you have said, look, I'm doing O'Reilly, I don't care what you say?
PALIN: There were mistakes being made in the campaign. I made mistakes in the campaign, I acknowledge that.

O'REILLY:: All right, let's talk about Senator McCain. Was he accessible to you?
PALIN: Absolutely, he still is, and I have great respect for him.
O'REILLY: Did you tell him, hey, I'm having trouble with some of your people?
PALIN: I never bad mouthed any of the operatives.
O'REILLY: Don't you think you should have gone to the presidential candidate and said, hey, they're mismanaging me, you gotta let me loose?
PALIN: Not necessarily. Not burdening the candidate who was out there every day, putting it on the line for voters to understand what it was that our ticket had to offer, not wanting to burden him with the internal operatives. Absolutely not.
O'REILLY: Did John McCain ever scold you after the Katie Couric interview and the Charlie Gibson interview? Did he call and say, Sarah, you have to elevate your game here?
PALIN: John McCain was nothing but positive, encouraging, and supportive.

O'REILLY: Katie Couric asked you an easy question, and you booted it, Governor.
PALIN: I sure did.
O'REILLY: Why did you boot it? If somebody asks what do you read, I say I read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post. I can reel them off in my sleep. You couldn't do it.
PALIN: It's ridiculous to suggest that I couldn't tell people what I read. But by that point it was quite obvious that it was going to be a bit of an annoying interview with badgering questions. It seemed to me that she didn't know anything about Alaska, about my job as Governor, about my accomplishments as a mayor or a governor. A question like that, though, yeah, I booted it, I screwed up, I should have been more patient and more gracious in my answer. It seemed to me that the question was more along the lines of, do you read?
O'REILLY: That led, in my opinion, to the McCain people saying, you know, we can't trust her out there because she booted that, and that's where you lost credibility among them. Clearly, in your book, you feel that Katie Couric was out to get you.
PALIN: I think that she was out to get anyone who didn't believe in her perspective. It's not like she was going to be unbiased, objective, and fair. But it is 'my bad,' it is my mistake, and it was my inexperience in dealing with the media elite in my response, a very annoyed response to a very annoying question.

O'REILLY: I was in Minneapolis watching your speech when you were nominated, and it was a lights out speech. Did you know, after you gave that speech, that the media was going to hammer you the way it hammered you?
PALIN: You know what I thought they were going to come after me for? Getting a D in a college course twenty-two years ago. That was the big controversy in my little world, that was the skeleton in my closet.
O'REILLY: So you didn't know they were going to come after you?
PALIN: No, and neither did the campaign.
O'REILLY: You should have known. You are a pro-life woman, a pro-gun woman. You didn't think the elite media in New York and DC was going to put a target on your forehead?
PALIN: Not to the extent that they did, no I didn't anticipate that. And evidently those running the campaign didn't anticipate it either.
O'REILLY: When I watched you on that stage I said, here's a regular person, which I think you are. Here's a regular person who now could be Vice President of the United States. Those pinheads back in New York and DC, they're not going to go for you, primarily because of the pro-life stuff.
PALIN: How would we have known, though, the extent of their disdain for the normal American, and I am a normal American. And when it comes to my pro-life views, there are more Americans today saying that they understand the sanctity of life, and that they are pro-life, than there are pro-abortion.

O'REILLY: You are a media star, whereas there aren't any other Republicans who are media stars. That's why they're attacking you so vehemently, do you know that?
PALIN: I don't know why they're attacking me.
O'REILLY: You're a threat.
PALIN: Well, OK, whatever. I do know, though, that you are spot on when you say perhaps they fear a voice that's coming from the heartland of America. And I say that figuratively and literally.
O'REILLY: You're a populist.
PALIN: A populist, yes.
O'REILLY: If David Letterman invited you on to plug the book, would you go?
PALIN: No, I don't think that I would want to boost his ratings and participate in that.
O'REILLY: Oprah asked you about Levi Johnston. Why did you answer? I wouldn't answer questions about him if I were you.
PALIN: Give me advice, how do you pivot away from questions about a character who is saying things that aren't necessarily true, and certainly aren't very nice about one of my children and my family?
O'REILLY: I would just say he's the father of my grandchild, and I want a very loving relationship in our family, but I'm not going to say anything more.
PALIN: After a year of getting clobbered by the media capitalizing on people who will make things up, there does come a time in any momma's heart and gut where they're going to say, no, you're picking on my kids, you're picking on my family, I'm going to set the record straight. My instinct is kind of like a Mama grizzly bear - you're touching my cubs, you're touching my kids, I'm going to respond and I'm going to set the record straight.