The Federalist’s Mary Katharine Ham called out The New York Times after the newspaper ran an editorial falsely claiming that Sarah Palin’s map of congressional districts was to blame for the Arizona shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011.
Ham explained on CNN’s “Inside Politics” Thursday afternoon that again blaming rhetoric as the cause of this week’s Alexandria shooting of another politician, during which Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was wounded and remains in critical condition, heads down a dangerous slippery slope.
“It’s problematic when we get into this ‘rhetoric leads to violence,’ thing because then what you do is you pick the rhetoric you don’t like and say: ‘Tut, tut. You can’t say those things anymore,'” Ham said.
“Conservatives are rightfully angry about what happened after the Jared Loughner-Giffords shooting, where it was blamed without evidence on Palin’s electoral map and electoral speech when it had nothing to do with that,” Ham said. “The New York Times perpetuated that lie in an editorial today.”
“Political speech is valued in this country,” she said. “Incitement is a real thing, but speech does not inevitably lead to violence. If you start making those conclusions, that’s a bad road to walk.”
