Lots of people, including me, were freaking out last Friday about Sarah Palin's inscrutable Facebook message, wherein she announced her intention to interview Donald Trump on her show "On Point with Sarah Palin." The program's hosted by a right wing cable network called One America News Network, which Wikipedia says reaches 15 million homes. Since everybody watches TV on their computer, people rushed to the OANN website, which crashed due to heavy traffic. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how much hate nostalgia you have for Palin) the network got things up an running at the scheduled time.

The interviews are worth checking out if you like watching a grown woman struggling to read, or if you want to hear "small government" GOP presidential candidates talking about how much they want the government to intervene in people's daily lives.

Over at Salon, Bob Cesca makes the case that the Palin / Trump convo revealed the orange ball of hate to be an advocate for liberal policies:

Trump proposed more infrastructure spending on roads and bridges; Palin reminded us that Trump would like to raise his own taxes; Trump said he wanted to spend more money on a particular government agency, the Veterans administration, which is, by definition, a socialized program; and they both whined about being asked a question on the Bible and personal religious views.

But Palin didn't just bring out the blue in Trump. She also highlighted the big government tendencies in Jeb! Bush and Ted Cruz.

Her interview with Jeb!, who seemed to be Skyping in from a grandmother’s living room, begins with the section of Jeb!'s campaign video that focuses on his role in assisting families with disabilities in Florida. Jeb! claims his faith led him to dedicate more funds for those with special needs, but the fact that the state was juggling several lawsuits initiated by folks who were being underserved in that department was also a source of great encouragement. After the video, Jeb! applauded Palin’s support of people with “different abilities,” suddenly revealing his sensitivity to language's ability to perpetuate harmful stereotypes. He then claims that “the government needs to play a role” in helping families with disabilities.

Smiling the way you'd smile if you were trying to be respectful to someone who was entering the early stages of cognitive decline before your very eyes, Jeb! also talked about defunding Planned Parenthood, which was expected, and his new e-book, Reply All, which was unexpected. The book is about Jeb! responding to the people of Flordia’s emails, a task that he says “added thirty hours" to his work week. By way of illustration, Jeb! mentioned swooping in to negotiate a student's credit transfer from a community college to the University of Florida, radically and personally altering the course of the student's life.

Palin's conversation with Cruz was all faith and fury, though this time it was Cruz who undermined everything he was about to say from the get-go: “It’s amazing to see a giant American flag behind you," he says, "it reminds me of the opening scene of Patton”—one of cinema's great moments of pure military camp. The interview was basically a long commercial for his upcoming gathering in D.C. on September 9. Cruz plans to beat the war drum with his buddy, Donald Trump, in an effort to bring the U.S. closer to sweet, sweet war with Iran rally support for the “resolution of disapproval" against the Iran deal.

He claimed that he wanted to "fund the entire government” but not Planned Parenthood, which sounds like he's not going to try to shut down the government? He finished with a moment of gross groveling, wherein Cruz admitted that he wouldn't be running for president today if it weren't for Palin's coming to Texas and supporting him, adding that he missed the moose chili she cooked up for him in Alaska.

So, to recap: Trump wants to spend more on infrastructure, Jeb! wants to spend more money to reform social programs and more of his time to intervene in your personal life, and Cruz wants to spend more on war. Got it.

Palin's special skill is undermining the conservative agenda simply by trying to articulate it. Her show therefore serves—accidentally and despite her best efforts—as good way to figure where the GOP candidates actually stand on policy issues. But that's the generous interpretation. I'll let Palin provide the less generous one herself.