The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening reminded some news watchers of what President Joe Biden said to Democratic donors six days ago, as reported by the New York Times: “During a video call with top donors on Monday, Mr. Biden told them: “It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.”
One may scoff at the idea that a metaphorical comment like Biden’s “bulls-eye” could possibly lead to an attempted assassination of Trump – yet, in 2011 the New York Times bizarrely blamed a campaign map issued by former John McCain running mate Sarah Palin’s political action committee for the attempted assassination of Democratic Rep. Giffords of Arizona.
After the January 2011 attack on Rep. Giffords and others, the press and the Times in particular pinned the blame on a map put out by Palin’s PAC a year before, in March 2010, that included Giffords’ district marked with a “crosshair” target, a symbol that identified congressional districts whose representative voted for Obamacare.
Giffords’ shooter Jared Lee Loughner was schizophrenic, and there was no evidence he was a Republican, a Palin fan, or had ever seen the graphic. That didn’t stop the Times from imposing a “violent rhetoric” template upon a Republican.
Then-Times media reporter Brian Stelter and investigative reporter Dan Van Natta Jr. egged the media to go after Palin’s campaign map on their Twitter accounts. Van Natta linked to an old Huffington Post article on the Palin “gun sights” on Gifford’s district. Stelter threw out red meat: “For the record, there has been no mention of Sarah Palin’s target map on any cable news channel.”
He didn’t have to wait long. A front-page story by congressional reporter Carl Hulse and Kate Zernike headlined “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics” quickly focused on Palin’s “cross hairs” map:
Ms. Giffords was also among a group of Democratic House candidates featured on the Web site of Sarah Palin’s political action committee with cross hairs over their districts, a fact that disturbed Ms. Giffords at the time.
“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said last March. “But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that.”
Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg led off their next-day story “After Arizona Shooting, Political Bickering Goes On” this way:
Aides to Sarah Palin angrily rejected suggestions that she had some responsibility for the angry political climate that served as a backdrop to the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
Some Democrats said Ms. Palin should at a minimum apologize for political tactics like putting out a map that placed cross hairs on Ms. Giffords’ district. They said she should think about what contribution she might have made to fomenting antigovernment sentiment.
(Palin unsuccessfully sued the paper for an editorial that ran after the June 2017 shooting of Republicans on a congressional baseball field, an editorial that again falsely blamed her campaign map for inspiring the shooting.)
Will the Times ever raise similar concerns about violent political tactics arising from Biden’s “bulls-eye,” not to mention any second thoughts about the “Trump is a fascist” drumbeat the press itself has encouraged for years? Will the Times voice any concerns about President Biden encouraging “stochastic terrorism” and undermining democracy, which the Times constantly accuses Trump of?
The Times did bring up the bulls-eye in a front-page story on Sunday, not as a full story supporting the blame-Biden thesis but rather in dismissive fashion, first loading up a “far-right” label to discredit the idea. The 40th out of 43 paragraphs:
A couple far-right House members blamed Mr. Biden, citing his recent comment that it was time to stop talking about the debate and “put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, said in a television interview that “Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting.” Representative Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia, wrote on social media that “Joe Biden sent the orders.”
As always, only the conservative side was accused of being responsible for violence -- and in Palin’s case at least, the accusation was based on a lie.
