Obama 'just doesn't get it, that this is an insensitive move on the part of those Muslims,' Palin said. Palin: Obama 'doesn't get' mosque

Sarah Palin Monday night chided President Barack Obama for his support of the right to build the proposed mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York, saying the president “doesn’t get it.”

“It sounds cliched to say that the president is disconnected from the American people on this issue, but how else do you describe it,” the former Alaska GOP governor said on Fox News. “He just doesn't get it, that this is an insensitive move on the part of those Muslims who want to build that mosque in this location. It feels like a stab in the heart to, collectively, Americans who still have that lingering pain from 9/11.”


Obama said Friday night that “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country” which includes “the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.

"This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable,” Obama said.

Republicans have seized on those comments to turn the mosque into a fall campaign issue.

“Nobody argues that that freedom of religion that the Muslims have to build that mosque somewhere,” Palin told Greta Van Susteren. For the mosque to be “so adamant about this exact location just a block or two away from 9/11, again, is that knife, it feels like.

“If the purpose of this mosque, as we are lead to believe, is to create this tolerant environment, to avoid anything like a 9/11 ever repeating, you have to ask why didn't one of those 100 [existing] mosques already accomplish such a thing,” Palin said. “So I don't buy into that reason, that that's the purpose of this location being chosen.”