Sarah Palin on Tuesday continued her campaign against the animal rights group PETA, who last week criticized the former GOP vice presidential candidate's 6-year-old son for using the family dog as a stepping stool. Palin, who has been lambasting PETA for days, this time called out the group for naming New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio its 2014 "Person of the Year" despite his questionable care of a groundhog last year.
"He had just, doggonit, killed the groundhog when he dropped it last year on Groundhog Day,” Palin said on NBC's "Today" show, referring to the incident last February when the Democratic mayor dropped a groundhog at the Staten Island Zoo. The animal died a week later from internal injuries.
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The Palin vs. PETA controversy began last Friday when Palin posted pictures to Facebook of her son, Trig, standing on the family's Labrador, Jill Hadassah, to reach the kitchen sink. Amid criticism from PETA and others, Palin responded with the message: “Chill. At least Trig didn’t eat the dog.”
That line was a dig at President Barack Obama, who wrote in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," that he had been "introduced to dog meat" in Indonesia, where he spent several years as a child. Palin asked PETA President Ingrid Newkirk: “Did you go as crazy when your heroic Man-of-Your-Lifetime, Barack Obama, revealed he actually enjoyed eating dead dog meat?" Newkirk fired back at Palin, calling her a "bizarrely callous woman."
Palin continued her criticism of Obama and PETA on Tuesday. “President Obama, to many of the far left radicals who are part of PETA, they look at him as — I don’t know — their Messiah. And I think he as a child, probably the same age as Trig, did much worse than just use the dog as a stepping stool,” she said.
Palin also referred to an image posted last July by "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" that depicted a young girl standing on a dog to reach the bathroom sink, noting PETA had once named the comedian as "Woman of the Year." But the group presented DeGeneres with the title in 2009, five years before the photo surfaced on her show's Facebook page.
Palin, who once publicly compared herself to a pit bull, defended her son's action as an attempt to overcome obstacles to help out around the house. And it was OK, she said on Tuesday, because Trig, who has down syndrome, didn't cause harm to the service dog, which is "strong and trained."