In 2011, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin created an ad that featured 20 Democrats that she wanted to see defeated in the 2012 election. The ad featured crosshairs overlaying congressional districts, a powerful graphic that Democrats claimed incited people to violence because one of the districts with crosshairs on it was Rep. Gabby Giiffords’ district.
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Giffords was shot and wounded on Jan. 8, 2011, by a mentally ill man, Jared Loughner. There was zero evidence that Loughner was “inspired” by the crosshairs ad, and even less evidence that he’d seen it. Nevertheless, Democrats shamelessly politicized the shooting, trying to blame Palin and the Republicans for “violent images.”
Then, in 2017, the New York Times editorial board published an editorial
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