Tag Archive: Oklahoma City

Sarah Palin loses gun scope court case as Republican shoots at Gabby Giffords’ husband in ad

The Palin/violence connection runs deep

As we have mentioned on multiple occasions, one of the lowest points in Republican Death Culture politics was Sarah Palin‘s 2010 ad which placed gun scope crosshairs on nearly a score of U.S. Congressional districts, one of which was Arizona’s 8th district, then served by Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords. Palin introduced the ad to her Twitter followers with the gun analogy “Don’t retreat, instead- RELOAD!” Several months later, Rep. Giffords was shot in the head, six others were killed, and another 12 were wounded at Giffords’ outdoor political event in Tuscon.

While it has not been proven that the Arizona shooter was directly prompted by Palin’s gun scope ad, many people made this connection, and felt that the shooting was a natural result of Palin’s ad. Of the numerous pieces written about this, one was a New York Times editorial which stated that “the link … was clear” between Palin’s gun scope ad and the subsequent shooting of Giffords. Palin sued the New York Times for defamation over the editorial, but on Tuesday, she lost her court case. The jury rendered a verdict in favor of the Times after the judge in the case ruled that Palin had failed to prove that the Times had acted with the required element of “actual malice” towards her.

At the same time, however, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, who is running this year in Arizona against Gabby Giffords’ husband, Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, has been airing an ugly, violent TV and social media ad. The ad features Lamon shooting at lookalike actors portraying President Joe Biden, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Kelly. The dangers here are obvious and almost too ominous to think about.

Donald Trump’s awful election season

Donald Trump speaks to reporters separated by social distancing, April 2020

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency could have been a shining moment for Donald Trump. American voters really only need two things from their president in a major crisis: First, they need unity. Second, they need competence. Unfortunately, Trump has been unable to display either one.

Trump has utterly failed to unify America. Recall George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, standing on a pile of rubble at “Ground Zero” that, just three days earlier, had been the World Trade Center, telling the American people:

I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people – and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

For a short time, at least, the country was unified, and Bush’s approval rating was a sky-high 90 percent (until he misused such unity, for example, to start an unrelated, disastrous war in Iraq).

Likewise, Bill Clinton gave us comforting words of unity after the 1995 domestic terrorist attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in both a speech immediately after the attack and a separate memorial prayer service four days later. Barack Obama also provided a unifying message of strength in announcing that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, after which crowds of young people gathered outside the White House to cheer President Obama’s action.

Donald Trump, the Great Divider

Armed white supremacist in Charlottesville, VA

Successful presidents of both political parties are usually the ones who, in times of crisis or difficulty, rise above partisanship and unite America. There are many examples of this, from Abraham Lincoln literally keeping the Union together, to Franklin Roosevelt leading us against Germany and Japan in World War 2, to Ronald Reagan eulogizing the Challenger Space Shuttle astronauts or calling upon Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, Bill Clinton soothing a shocked America after the Oklahoma City bombing, George W. Bush standing with firefighters at the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 attacks, and Barack Obama successfully hunting down and killing Osama bin Laden. We may not agree with the policies these presidents pursue after such crises (for example, Bush’s Iraq War), but at least for a time, these leaders make us feel like we’re part of one big, strong nation.

Unfortunately, this is not the case with Donald Trump. Rather than being a Great Uniter, he has repeatedly proven himself to be the Great Divider, usually along racial and ethnic lines. Indeed, Trump essentially begun his presidential run during Barack Obama’s presidency by being one of the head cheerleaders in the “birther” movement, which questioned Obama’s Americanism and his birth certificate. Trump then ran his own presidential campaign in a divisive manner from the get-go, saying in his presidential announcement speech about Mexican immigrants:

They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.

From there, Trump has pitted one group (often his base of white males) against another, including the following partial list: