Roger Ailes suggests that Sarah Palin's enemies want her dead. Update: Palin weighs in.

This comes courtesy of an interview Ailes did with the Hollywood Reporter:

Hollywood Reporter: Why bring back Sarah Palin just a few months after not renewing her contract? 

Ailes: The only two people I knew who got worse press than her were Richard Nixon and George W. Bush -- some of it unfairly, much of it unfair to her family. She's recognizable, she's attractive, and she still has the message of stop raising taxes. The Tea Party started as a group that [the government] could make go home to bake meatloaf at any point in the last three years by simply doing two things: Stop raising taxes and stop stealing their money. Congress can't stop spending money. I'm not a defender of everything she says. I don't hear everything she says. But I know she represents a certain group of people who rose up against their own party, which you rarely see. I probably hired her back, if you really want to get to the bottom of it, to give her a chance to say her piece and piss off the people that wanted her dead.

"People that wanted her dead?"

Okay look as one of her most vocal detractors I can say that while I certainly dislike Palin on a fundamental level, and think she is one of the worst things to happen to political discourse in the last fifty years, I certainly do not want her dead.

In fact if I knew of anybody making actual, non-joking death threats against her I would notify the FBI immediately.

And just as a reminder to Mr. Ailes, those of us on the Left are NOT the ones constantly talking about an armed revolution, joining militias, or demanding that assault weapons and handguns be made readily available to every wacko and former mental patient in the country.

No if somebody offs Sarah Palin, the FIRST place the Feds need to look is among the very people that she calls supporters.

Because when it comes to crazy, that have the market cornered.

(H/T to Politicususa.)

Update: It looks like Palin feels the need to add her two cents as well: 

Fox’s Roger Ailes says he hired me “to piss off the people that wanted her dead.” Hmmm. Funny. I accepted for the same reason! 

Please! After Ailes fired Palin's ass for being a loose cannon, and spouting shit even too crazy for his faux news show, she cam crawling back on her hands and knees to get her job back, and he threw her the tiniest bone possible.  

If Ailes thought that Palin was worth the money, or she could do the job, he would gladly give her her own show right in prime time.

But he knows she is an untalented lunatic, so he keeps her around for shits and giggles and to piss off the Left and nothing more.

On the other hand without her Fox appearances people would quickly forget that Sarah Palin even exists. And I don't think that hunting show, on a channel that only a handful of people even know exists, would do much to keep her in the spotlight.