Former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin isn’t included in the official list of speakers for the Republican National Convention next week, and Donald Trump suggested in an interview that her absence is because she lives too far from the venue.
“She was asked,” Trump told the Washington Examiner in a phone interview on Thursday. “It’s a little bit difficult because of where she is. We love Sarah. Little bit difficult because of, you know, it’s a long ways away.”
Palin, who lives in Alaska, endorsed Trump for the GOP nomination in January. The convention will be hosted in Cleveland, roughly an 11-hour flight away from her home state.
Trump said he hopes people will be inspired as they come out of the GOP convention next week. The speaker list for the four-day event includes sports celebrities and high-profile GOP leaders.
“I think that in the end we want to get inspiration,” he said. “We want people to be inspired. We want to make America great again. We want to make America first. And, you know, that’s largely what the theme is and largely what we’re going to be talking about.”
Trump described the set list as a roster of “winners.”
“You know, when you have [Ultimate Fighting Championship President] Dana White and you have some of the people we have on … [Famed evangelist] Franklin Graham is going to be speaking and so many different people,” he said. “We have [retired Indiana college basketball coach] Bobby Knight, Coach Knight, who helped me so much in Indiana and elsewhere. I don’t know, I think it’s a really great group of speakers.”
More from Trump’s interview with the Examiner will appear next week in the magazine’s special edition for the Republican National Convention.
