Remember Sarah Palin? And the appalling attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords?

In 2011 a lone madman shot Giffords in the head. It was a terrible attack on Giffords and on American democracy.

The idea that anyone would dare to influence the process of government by violence was condemned by all.

Yet in the ensuing attempt to cast the blame wider some Democrats settled on Palin.

Palin’s political action committee had earlier released a list of target seats which were in their sights. One of them was Giffords’ seat.

Of course the idea of “targets” and “crosshairs” is fairly standard campaign rhetoric.

But the Democrats — and the Democrat media — decided that Palin was in fact guilty of incitement.

It is a really dirty game to play, and Palin has said later how appalled she was by it all.

There are indeed madmen out there and aside from the smear it is the sort of thing that would torture a person’s conscience. Was there someone out there who did take this literally?

Well how come when it comes to attacks on Republican lawmakers and two exceptionally near-miss attempts to assassinate former President Trump there are so few people applying a similar standard?

After the first assassination attempt on Trump in July, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) had to fire one of his aides after she posted on Facebook, “I don’t condone violence but please get you some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time ooops that wasn’t me talking.”

Meanwhile Jack Black’s Tenacious D bandmate, Kyle Gass, was asked during a performance to make a wish. “Don’t miss Trump next time” was the “hilarious” response.

But even in July wiser voices realized that America — as well as the former President — had avoided disaster by a hair’s breadth. The more recent attempt, this weekend, saw that restraint go out the window.

After another shooter tried to kill Trump — this time on the former President´s golf course in Florida — Lester Holt of NBC said: “Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail.”

Ah — so it was Trump that brought it on himself, apparently! Isn’t “victim-blaming” meant to be one of the great sins of our age? Not if it relates to Trump, it seems.

The same day David Frum of The Atlantic magazine wrote: “Trump and his running mate have spent the past week successfully inciting violence in Springfield, Ohio. Today they want to present themselves as near-victims of violence — in this case, of violence completely unrelated to themselves and at a very safe distance from themselves.”

I don’t know whether I’d count having another rifle barrel pointed at you as “a very safe distance.”

But on and on they have gone this week. On Tuesday’s edition of “The View” Whoopi Goldberg opined “Let’s stop this thing. You know, let’s stop this both sides stuff. Because it’s not correct. It is not both sides, it is one clear side, and you can point to many, many reports. You can point to all kinds of stuff that’s been reported. You guys have to pull it back. This is not us or them, this is you got to stop doing what you’re doing, JD [Vance] and what you’re doing, Mr. [Trump], because you are not helping the situation.”

Was Whoopi? I wonder.

Meantime perhaps the most deranged person in American media, Joy Reid of MSNBC, said on her show on Monday, “The irony of it is the actual violence we’re seeing comes much more disproportionately from MAGA themselves.” Again and again the Democrat media tried to say that it was Donald Trump’s fault.

Most of these people have been in a sticky corner since the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt. People who have spent recent years insisting that Trump is “literally Hitler” had to say “I still think he’s literally Hitler, but I´m glad he hasn’t been killed.”

This time they’ve changed the tune slightly. Now the line seems to be “If he doesn’t want to keep being shot then he should change his ways.”

Don Lemon was on his old network of CNN this week saying that “If Donald Trump wants Kamala Harris and others to stop saying that he is a threat to democracy, then he should stop threatening democracy.”

Will some Democrats realize that wild rhetoric can come from all sides and that the rhetoric problem is not one-sided?

In 2022. Chris Hayes of MSNBC claimed of the Supreme Court, “They can do whatever they want unless someone stops them. There’s no other conclusion now but that the Supreme Court is — I fear — an acute threat to American representative governance and democracy.”

Yesterday the Department of Justice indicted a man from Alaska for threatening to torture and kill six conservative Supreme Court Justices.

I doubt that man takes direction from Chris Hayes. But by the rules of this game anyone would be free to claim that.

Tone it down? Who wants to go first?

Iran, Iran, Iran!

Remember all the years of “Russia, Russia, Russia” when it was claimed that Vladimir Putin was so powerful he could even swing US elections?

Well why there is not more talk about an actual threat? That is — “Iran, Iran, Iran.”

Two years ago we learned of an Iranian plot to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former national security advisor John Bolton on American soil.

This July we learned that the US Intelligence Agencies had got wind of an Iranian plot to assassinate former President Trump.

Presumably because of the hard line all three men took on the revolutionary Islamic mullahs in Tehran.

Now this week we learned that the Iranians recently hacked Trump’s election campaign and sent information they had gleaned to members of the Democrat campaign team.

The Democrats insist that they haven’t made any use of this material. But it is hard to unsee something once you have seen it. Especially if it useful to you.

So why are we not hearing about Iranian election interference? Or, come to that, the “interference” of trying to murder American officials on US soil?

Is it because it isn’t useful? Or doesn’t fit the plans of those same people who were so keen to say “Russia, Russia, Russia”?