NY Times Editorial runs revisionist history of Gabby Giffords shooting to blame Palin

Ben Shapiro:
On Wednesday evening, The New York Times released its editorial on the attempted massacre of Republican Congressmen and their aides by a Trump-hating Bernie Sanders supporter. It was, without a doubt, the worst editorial they have run in a decade.

The editorial essentially called for gun control - no shock, since every shooting with a semi-automatic engenders a fully automatic response from the mainstream press. But the truly egregious part of the incoherently awful essay came when The Times attempted to pin the rise in toxic rhetoric in the United States on ... Sarah Palin. Really.

Here's the most insane section:

Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin's political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs. Conservatives and right-wing media were quick on Wednesday to demand forceful condemnation of hate speech and crimes by anti-Trump liberals. They're right. Though there's no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack, liberals should of course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right.

This is Orwellian in the truest sense of the word.

The long-repeated lie that Sarah Palin was somehow responsible for the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords was debunked years ago. Jared Lee Loughner wasn't a conservative. He wasn't a Republican. He wasn't sane. There is no evidence whatsoever that he ever saw the infamous Palin targeted district map. None. The rumor was discredited within hours of the shooting. But six years later, The Times is still repeating the lie as true - and not just as true, but as the ultimate example of political rhetoric prompting violence. Remember, The Times isn't just mentioning the Palin-Giffords lie in offhand fashion - they're saying that there is "no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack." Oh f***ing really? Loughner was a paranoid schizophrenic. The shooter in this case plastered his social media with messages ripping Republicans and Trump and mirroring the most extreme excesses of the hard Left.

This is fever swamp territory from The New York Times. The facts don't match the narrative, so the facts must die a gruesome, slow death.
...
The shooter in the assassination attempt against Republicans in Congress was more likely to get his news from the New York Times than from any conservative outlet.  His hate came straight from the liberal playbook.

The Times editorial also comes in for criticism by Red States and Erick Erickson.  If the Times was using the discredited narrative about Palin to show "even-handedness" in its criticism of rhetoric, is was way off base and should retract it editorial.

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