CBS host calls out Peggy Noonan for labeling De Blasio a 'former Sandinista'

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter and aide to President Ronald Reagan, was forced to backtrack and admit that she was wrong on Sunday after she called New York City Mayor a "former Sandinista."

On the CBS News Sunday program Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer observed that there was a "universal truth" in the fact that health care should be a human right.

"Historians will write books about how this got so messed up," Washington Post journalist David Ignatius opined. "How the president left the details to people who couldn't execute them is the biggest mystery of all."

"Thinking about this year ahead, the election of a new mayor in New York -- very liberal, replacing the defining figure of centrism and moderation, Mayor Bloomberg -- I wonder whether this is going to be a year in which these liberal themes -- even Obamacare, minimum wage, income inequality -- will move to the front for Democrats and for the country," he added.

Noonan said that the "funny thing" about income inequality was that everyone seemed to have just discovered that rich people were wealthy and poor people were impoverished.

"The argument is that they are getting more so," Schieffer pointed out.

"Yes, and this administration used to brag about how well the stock market was going," Noonan quipped. "But the answer so for to inequality is being presented so far -- even in New York -- brand new mayor, progressive, lefty, former Sandinista."

"Former Sandinista!" the CBS host exclaimed. "Now, I didn't know that part."

"I beg your pardon," Noonan replied. "That is not true. Former enthusiast for Sandinista-like political movement in Nicaragua."

While Noonan was working for Reagan in the 1980s, De Blasio opposed the former president's fight against the left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

To destabilize the Sandinistas, Reagan funneled CIA funds to a group known as the "contras." But eventually the U.S. public forced Reagan to stop openly funding the contras, and the proceeds from U.S. arm sales with Iran were illegally transferred to the counter-revolutionary forces.

Fourteen Reagan administration officials were indicted and 11 were later convicted over the Iran-Contra affair. All of those convictions were either vacated or pardoned by the end of President George H.W. Bush's presidency.

Just days after De Blasio was elected in November, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh referred to him as a "a Sandinista" and a "communist." It's a theme that also has been repeated on Fox News.

Watch this video from CBS' Face the Nation, broadcast Jan. 5, 2014.