MSNBC contributor: 'Level of anti-Semitism' against Bloomberg over gun control

MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle on Monday said that he had seen a "level of anti-Semitism" against Michael Bloomberg after the Jewish mayor began to push for gun control in response to the December mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

During a panel discussion on Morning Joe, former Romney adviser Dan Senor said that Bloomberg was "galvanizing the Second Amendment rights community" by using his personal fortune to fund a TV advertising blitz directed at senators from Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona.

"The fact that he has put himself as the face of this -- a big city, blue state mayor, telling these senators in red states what they should be doing and their constituents in those states, I think is not constructive," Senor explained.

Barnicle, however, observed that bigotry had tainted the arguments of gun control opponents.

Let's get down to it, Mike Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City," Barnicle said. "I mean, there's a level of anti-Semitism in this thing, directed toward Bloomberg."

"There's no doubt about it," MSNBC host Al Sharpton agreed.

But the neoconservative Senor insisted that anti-Semitism was not part of the opposition to Bloomberg: "I think it's the perception of big city, urban elites -- wealthy, you know, elites telling the rest of the little people how to live their lives."

Following Bloomberg's Sunday appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, commenters at the white supremacist website Stormfront site called Bloomberg's policies "Jew York paradise."

"Bloomberg is not insane," one commenter wrote. "He is a jew. The erratic behaviour is hardwired into their reptilian brain. They have neither conscience nor sympathy for their victims. In fact the more the victim screams and struggles. The more excited they become."

On Sunday, the Daily Mailreported that that New York City EMS lieutenant Timothy Dluhos had broken down in tears on a street after the New York Post confronted him about racist tweets, including calling Bloomberg "King Heeb."

There was no indication that Dluhos' comments were connected to the gun control debate.

Watch this video from MSNBC's Morning Joe, broadcast March 25, 2013.

(h/t: Mediaite)