Sarah Palin in E-Mail to Glenn Beck: "I Hate Violence"
On his radio program on Monday, Glenn Beck described an email exchange with Sarah Palin over Saturday's tragedy in Tucson. Beck said Palin told him, "I hate violence."
Complete Coverage: Tragedy in TucsonBeck said he wrote to Palin urging her to look into security measures in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others because "there are nutjobs on all sides." He told listeners he gave the former Alaska governor the name of the security firm he uses.
"Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you are felling the same heat, if not much more on this," Beck said he wrote.
"I hate violence," Beck quotes Palin as having responded. "I hate war. Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this."
During the program, Beck decried suggestions that certain conservative commentators - including himself, Palin and Rush Limbaugh - have increased the risk of violence against lawmakers through inflammatory rhetoric.
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Following the shootings in Tucson on Saturday - in which six were killed and 14 injured - critics pointed to a map featuring 20 House Democrats that used crosshairs imagesto show their districts that Palin released in March to suggest Palin bore responsibility for encouraging violence. (A Palin aide responded in an interview that "we have nothing whatsoever to do with this.")
Beck said that there was no evidence that Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged shooter, was directed by right-wing political motivations. (Laughner appears to have had some far-right beliefs, but his ideology was muddled and far outside the mainstream.)
"The media continues to toss blame around but they didn't get right," Beck said during the program. He suggested the media were nonetheless assuming it knew Loughner's motivations, stating that the media have "no evidence, you don't have the full story, you don't know what's going on!"
Beck then listed what he said were instances of liberals using violent rhetoric, including, he said, Madonna threatening to "kick [Sarah Palin's] ass" during a concert.
"This is Shirley Sherrod again," Beck said, arguing that - as with a 2010 incident involving a staff member of the U.S. Department of Agriculture who was wrongly forced to resign from her post - blame was being misdirected due to a lack of accurate information in the media.
