Media Matters founder and president David Brock told Lawrence O'Donnell that he is going to call Sarah Palin personally to ask her to distance herself from Glenn Beck.
Speaking on "The Last Word" on Tuesday, Brock said that he thinks Beck has been inciting violence -- most notably in the case of Byron Williams, who targeted the San Francisco-based nonprofit Tides Foundation in July. Many have raised questions about a connection between Beck's repeated denunciations of Tides and Williams' attempt to assassinate employees of the foundation.
Brock, along with Michael Keegan, president of People For The American Way, also wrote a blog post for The Huffington Post on Tuesday, calling for Palin, who is a friend of Beck's and appeared at his "Restoring Honor" rally in late August, to "refudiate" the Fox News host:
...speaking out against the incitement to violence by powerful media outlets ought to be something that transcends the partisan divide. This is a far more serious media matter than Palin's lamentations about the "lamestream media." If Palin does not speak up strongly on this media outrage, the next Byron Williams will succeed and we are going to see another Oklahoma City in this country.
WATCH:
On O'Donnell's show, Brock repeated his call for Palin to "step up" and denounce any politically motivated violence:
"So, Sarah Palin, right now, in our view, needs to step up...she is the one person in this country right now, today, who in the national interest, just in the moment to put partisanship aside, could pull this country back from the precipice of another Oklahoma City. And that's what a real leader does, that's what we're asking...we published this piece this morning. We heard nothing today...if we hear nothing in the morning, I am personally going to call Sarah Palin. I'm going to ask Michael Keegan of PFAW to join me on that call and we're going to make a personal plea to her to stop this insanity."
O'Donnell said that such a move from Palin would be "an absolutely brilliant political posture for [her] to adopt at this moment, in this kind of atmosphere. She would get so much credit for a move like that without costing her anything from her right-wing base."