Bloomberg Blasts Palin's Mosque Tweets

Michael Bloomberg was drawn into a war of words with Sarah Palin today, after one of his aides responded harshly to Sarah Palin’s bumbling tweets about the mosque being built near Ground Zero. In response to Palin’s last tweet—“Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts.”—left-leaning aide Andrea Schlesinger replied, “@SarahPalinUSA whose hearts? Racist hearts?” Reporters, naturally, rushed to ask Bloomberg about it.

“Sarah Palin has a right to her opinions, but I could not disagree more,” the mayor said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Everything the United States stands for ... is tolerance.” A reporter asked him to respond directly to the tweet, which “seemed to suggest that Palin was being racist.” Bloomberg replied, “I thought she more than ‘seemed to.’” He was referring to Schlesinger, but an aide hurriedly passed him a note saying that it had sounded like he’d been bashing Palin. Bloomberg clarified that he doesn’t consider Palin "remotely racist.” (More Michael Bloomberg stories.)