Donald Trump Tries, Fails to Buy 'Ground Zero Mosque'

(Sept. 9) -- He can't fire the so-called ground zero mosque, after all.

Donald Trump's publicist announced today that the real estate magnate and television reality-show host was prepared to buy out the controlling investor in the controversial Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan that has become commonly known as the ground zero mosque, but is officially called Park51.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump informed Hisham Elzanaty of his decision to offer him cash for his stake in the project so that it could be relocated to a part of the city that is farther from the site of the 9/11 terror attacks.

"Please let this letter serve to represent my offer to purchase your site located at 45 Park Place, New York, NY 10007, for what you paid plus 25%," Trump said in his letter. "I am making this offer as a resident of New York and a citizen of the United States, not because the location is a spectacular one (because it is not), but because it will end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation that is destined, in my opinion, to only get worse."

Trump also noted that, as part of the terms of the purchase agreement, Elzanaty would agree to move Cordoba House "at least five blocks further from the World Trade Center site."

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But shortly after the story went public, lawyers representing Elzanaty rejected the offer and made clear what their client thought of Trump's gambit.

"This is just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight," Wolodymyr Starosolsky, a lawyer for Elzanaty, told The Associated Press, adding that Trump's offer was much too low.

In an interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the spiritual leader behind Cordoba House, said that relocating the project could inflame Muslim extremists.

"If we moved from that location, the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse," Rauf said. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack."

In other headlines concerning American-Islamic relations: Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, called off his planned Quran-burning ceremony scheduled for Sept. 11 early this evening but later said he may reconsider that decision. He told reporters he was having second thoughts about canceling because he said he had been lied to about the mosque near ground zero being moved to another location.