Former Gov. Sarah Palin on 'My Toughest Year So Far'

NEW YORK -- Two presidential campaigns ago, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became a conservative superstar. Seven years later, the self-proclaimed "Mamma Grizzly" is calling 2015 one of the toughest years of her life.

"Some things happened that I haven't talked about publicly, things like getting canned from a job I really liked, sort of out of the blue, because I called somebody out," she said.

Palin was let go from her job as a Fox News political analyst in June. 

"Next morning I got word, 'Oh, we no longer need you anymore,'" she recalled. "Yeah, it was a shock, but more power to Fox News."

"They're a private enterprise," she continued. "They can fire someone for wearing the wrong color tie that day -- that's their prerogative and I've been on both sides of the hiring and firing."

"They [Fox] still interview you?" CBN News' Wendy Griffith asked the former governor.

"Heck, yeah. I have a great relationship with them," she replied. "It was just kind of a little bit of a shocker of knowing that the 'haters' are going to love this one."

Then, the tabloids went into overdrive when the long-awaited marriage of her 25-year-old daughter Bristol didn't happen. Bristol was pregnant, but the father's identity has not been determined.

The cancelled engagement was then followed by a cancer scare.

"Bristol said, 'Mom, you need to go into the doctor and get that thing checked,'" Palin recalled. "She insisted and I resisted so I finally went in to a doctor and got something checked, came back, biopsy -- a cancer."

"Melanoma?" Griffith asked.

"Yeah, something like that," Palin said. "Anyway, a surgeon dug it out and everything was okay."

"In the grand scheme of things, especially compared to other people going through great challenges, it was not big deal," she concluded. "All this stuff within a few weeks' time, it was one of those years. It's like, 'Okay God, what are you preparing us for this time?'"

Sweet Freedom

Palin says that's why her new book, a devotional called Sweet Freedom, is perfectly timed. It's all about going to God during life's most challenging times.

"I wanted to write this book to show people, 'Hey, you want an answer? Let me show you where it is.' I'll show you a verse that pertains to something very specific, even like taxation or whether it's right for a Christian to carry arms and defend themselves. What did Jesus say about that kind of stuff?" Palin explained.

"This is not an ordinary devotional. This really is a call to action," Griffith said.

"Because God doesn't drive parked cars," Palin said. "He equips us, He provides us the answers, but he doesn't just expect us to sit on the Word and contemplate it. He's like, 'No, here's an answer for you, now go forth and conquer for the Kingdom.'"

Gov. Palin burst onto the national stage as Sen. John McCain's running mate in 2008. Her speech electrified the country, but as Palin shares in her book, she still depended on God to help her with the pressure of a national campaign.

The night of her debate with Democrat Joe Biden in front of millions of television viewers, she desperately wanted someone to pray with her "because it's a big darn deal and no one on the campaign team seemed real enthused about praying," she joked.

"The only one there was a little prayer partner, Piper, a little 7-year-old girl at the time. So I said, 'Piper, come here honey. We've got to pray about this,'" Palin recalled. 

"This is a competition and God says we can pray for victory so I said, 'Piper, let's pray we win, pray that God just speaks right through me.' And Piper says, 'Mom that'd be cheating,'" Palin said, laughing.

Palin is one of among millions of Americans who are praying for this country specifically about choosing the next president.

"If the election were today, who would you vote for?" Griffith asked.

"It would be a Republican," Palin replied. "It would because the status quo has got to go. And the status quo really is a liberal agenda that is transformed this country into something unrecognizable."

Palin on Donald Trump

"What do you think about Donald Trump?" Griffith asked.

"I meet with him quite a bit, and I also speak with other candidates quite often. I'm so thankful that he's running," Palin replied.

"He's obviously not bought and sold in the traditional sense in politics because he's self-funding his campaign," she noted. "He's not going to…'do them any favors.' That's part of that status quo that's got to go."

Although she stopped short of an endorsement, Palin said she likes that Trump "calls it like it he sees it."

"To me that's refreshing," she told CBN News. "He's a fighter, a competitor. We need a fighter that can put our nation first."

Defeating ISIS

The former Alaska governor also shared her thoughts on ISIS and what it would take to defeat the jihadist army.

"We have to quit being this "namby pamby" kind of milk-toast, 'let's discuss things with them, let's reach out and try to understand them.' No -- they are the enemy, they are evil," Palin exclaimed.

"Do you think we should declare war?" Griffith asked.

"America should be that leader saying, 'It is time to declare war on that enemy' and first to recognize who the enemy is and to be candid enough and honest enough to let the people know that there are aspects of the Muslim religion that are part of a death cult -- those who are so extreme that they would interpret parts of that Koran that it's good to go ahead and kill those who would disagree with you religiously or culturally," she said.

Palin called Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's claim that the world is not at war with Islam "naïve."

"It' a scary kind of naïve that anyone would believe that the radical Islamic movement, jihad, that it can be understood and leading to some kind of embarrassing of it," she told CBN News.

"No, we have to be honest about it," she said. "It has to be stopped, and it has to be stopped over there before it does come over here."

Palin on Family

"When you were running for vice president you had a little baby [born with Down syndrome]. How is Trig doing?" Griffith asked.

"The world got to know Trig when he was 16 weeks old," Palin said. "There I was on the campaign trail with him, and he's 7 years old now."

"He's reading," she added. "He's not verbal, so it's kind of hard to understand what he's reading, but we know he is. He understands it."

"His big sister, Piper, we call her the 'Trig whisperer' because she can interpret everything that he's saying," Palin shared.

"Sometimes it's like, 'Piper, what is it that he's wanting?' And it's like, 'Mom, he wants his stuffed something or another.' How does she know that? But she does," she said.

Bristol was pregnant with her son Tripp during Palin's national campaign. Today, Tripp and Trig are great friends.

"The teacher said, 'Let's see how independent he can be on his first field trip,'" Palin recalled. "But I was still like, you know…'Oh, my baby! How is he going to make it all the way into Anchorage to the play they were going to?'"

"And I was talking to Bristol about it, and Bristol's little boy who is also in first grade was overhearing it, and Tripp said, 'Nana, don't be scared. I'll sit with him on the bus,'" she continued.

"And it was just one of those things where it's like, Bristol and I look at each other, and we're like, 'What would our boys do without each other?' The world doesn't see it like we see it," she said.

Appeal to Heaven or Face Defeat

As for America, Palin says we're in the days similar to George Washington's where God's people must appeal to heaven or face defeat.

"We're going to go under if we don't get back to our roots," she warned. "It was illustrated by Gen. George Washington carrying a flag that commanded the army that fought for our freedom."

"That flag said, 'Appeal to Heaven!' We have to do that," Palin said. "They knew they couldn't do it on their own. We would never be free, never be safe, never be prosperous if we didn't give it all up to God."

"So yeah, we're definitely at that time again. We need to get back to that," she concluded.

Palin's latest book, Sweet Freedom, is available wherever books are sold.