The New York Times editorial on the GOP baseball shooting dug up the old smear that attempted to blame Palin for the Giffords shooting. There has been zero evidence of any such connection. Loughner was mentally ill and he had an old obsession with Giffords.
Here's what the paper maliciously and falsely wrote.
…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.
After outrage and lawsuit threats, the Times corrected it to...
Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, 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. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. 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. But in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established.
It's hard to think of a better way for the New York Times to have shown bad faith.
The Times tries to have its cake and eat it too. It still tries to link Palin to the shooting while ignoring the biggest problem with its claim, that Loughner was mentally ill and not political in any conventional sense. It justifies the linkage by invoking its own criticisms. This bizarre circular reasoning has the Times mentioning its fake news smear because it wrote about it then.
"No connection to the shooting was ever established." Because there wasn't one. There's also no connection between the New York Times and the death of 30 babies from lead poisoning in Detroit.
But writing "no connection to the shooting was ever established" is the old game of innuendo. And it shows just how slimy the paper's propaganda is. Instead of retracting its lies, it tries to keep the lie alive.