Toyota targets crosshairs on Democratic district.

ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer raised heads in Washington Tuesday by charging that Toyota Motor Corporation deliberately incited the attempted murder of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

At the end of an otherwise uplifting special interview Tuesday evening, Sawyer charged that Toyota attacked the Democrat as payback for White House probes into the electronic subsystems of their vehicles a year earlier. Those probes, as well as statements by many Democrats, forced Toyota to recall millions of vehicles and caused their stock to fall by several percentage points. While the White House’s allegations turned out to be counterfactual, Democrats continued to fault Toyota for its faulty handling of the brake issue’s media coverage.

After Treasury Secretary Ray LaHood told Toyota drivers “if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it”, Toyota stock dropped 6%; throughout the recall, their stock dropped 16%. Auto industry insiders believe Toyota held a grudge against Democrats for drawing attention to the potential electronics issue. According to Sawyer, that grudge caused the assassination attempt on the district 8 Democrat.

In a voiceover toward the end of the special, Sawyer said, “you may remember Toyota targeted Giffords’s district, among the districts of other Democrats, in their navigation unit—by placing a gunsight over addresses in the districts.”

Ironically, Congresswoman Giffords herself drove a Toyota 4Runner with the offensive navigation unit. According to Sawyer, “Giffords once worried aloud to her husband” that the automaker’s navigation symbols would put her in danger.

Sawyer suggested that these gunsights inspired extremist Jared Loughner, follower of right-wing ideologues such as Karl Marx, to assault his local congresswoman with a weapon. Sawyer has suggested boycotting all navigation units that use crosshairs.

The Reader attempted to bring Sawyer in for an interview, but the news anchor became lost driving out of Alexandria.