Here’s a clip of GOP/Conservative gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio on “Meet the Press” this morning defending his decision to make the mosque proposed for construction near Ground Zero a central focus of his campaign.

“There are millions of peace-loving good Muslims in American. This imam, Rauf, is not one of them. He is not a bridge builder…We are not supportive of having this mosque, this imam in this location,” Lazio said.

“Let’s be very precise about this. We’re not talking about a whole religion. We’re not talking about prayer. There are over 100 mosques in New York City. There are a couple of thousand in America. Nobody is talking about a cap on mosques. Nobody is saying that people shouldn’t have a place to pray.”

Not much new there. In fact, what’s most striking about the segment is how little Lazio actually managed to get a few words in.

His claims about the imam were countered by WSJ reporter The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who noted Rauf spoke at a memorial service in 2003 for Daniel Pearl, the Jewish WSJ reporter who was murdered by Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

“He got up there and said, ‘I am a Jew,’” Goldberg recalled. “He got up in a synagogue and said, ‘I am a Jew. I identify with Judaism.’”

“And he was declaring in front of an audience, which is very dangerous, by the way for a Muslim cleric to do. He is saying that I stand against Al-Qaeda and what they’ve done. He’s done this repeatedly….The man in my personal experience is a bridge builder.”

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