joining us now is msnbc political analyst richard wolff, also senior strategist at public strategies and author of "renegade, the making of a president." good evening. governor palin says that because her son is fair game, questioning president obama's citizenship is fair game, even though it was never the obama campaign that targeted her kid, even though she complains at every turn about the people she calls trig-truthers. is she trying to have it both ways? >> can we count the number of ways she's trying to have it here? i think there is a nice insight here into the thinking of sarah palin here. first of all, this concept of fair game. the idea that it is a game or there's some -- kind of an immature way to look at politics and campaign interchanges. it's not actually equivalent to raise questions about citizenship compared to voting records. so it's not the questions being asked that makes it similar. there's no equivalence just because one set of stories involves a birth certificate and so does another. it's either willfully deceptive or incredibly simplistic or there's a third o

. >> richard wolffe covered the obama campaign in 2008. he has a book out called "renegade: the making of the president." do you want to tell us following the president during the 2008 campaign? >> i was one of the very few who was there at the very beginning to the very end. the book came about at the candidate's suggestion. he thought it would be a great idea for me to write a book. i told him it was a stupid idea until i figured out that there was something about his story that was worth telling. and the way that -- there's something obscured and maybe hidden and reserved about him and that's how i approached the book, not the story of the campaign but the story of him as it played out through the campaign. >> had you read his book prior? >> yeah, i read both of them. by the way, his first book is a lot better than the second book. yeah, dreams of my father is an extraordinary piece of literature and a tough standard when you're looking at his story but you can't let a politician write their own story and that's how i approached this on

[laughter] >> the author is richard wolffe, the book is renegade. thanks so much. >> my pleasure. >> former prosecutor william hyland jr. says thomas jefferson did not have an affair with sally hemings nor fathered her child. this is presented at in virginia. >> let m