A quarter of a century later, countless Americans can effortlessly remember the details of what they saw and did on Sept. 11, 2001. The problem with Donald Trump’s reflections on his own experiences is that his story continues to evolve.
At a White House event on Tuesday morning, the president shared a lengthy anecdote about his role in taking a construction crew with him to Lower Manhattan “right after this happened.” As part of the same story, the Republican added that two firefighters (“big, strong guys”) grabbed him under his arms and “literally lifted” him up, carrying him away from a potentially unstable building that “they thought … was coming down.”
Hours after the unscripted comments, Trump argued by way of his social media platform, “Everything I said was exactly accurate.” There’s reason to believe otherwise. CNN’s Daniel Dale explained:
It’s possible there are elements of truth in Trump’s latest story, versions of which he has told before, but he hasn’t provided any evidence for it. And some parts of his Tuesday account — which he delivered at an event honoring 9/11 first responders — are misleading at best. He was miles away from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and was not whisked out of any building near Ground Zero that day.
Asked for evidence for Trump’s story or more details about what supposedly happened, the White House did not provide any.
In light of everything we know about the incumbent president, he’s likely to lean into his latest version of events, hoping to overpower requests for evidence and documented details that point in a very different direction, but there’s one key element to this that’s worth keeping in mind: Trump hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt.
As a GOP candidate in 2016, Trump routinely referred to 9/11 on the campaign trail, usually as a way to justify his proposed Muslim ban, but as The Washington Post reported 10 years ago this week, “several of Trump’s statements about what he witnessed that day appear to be greatly exaggerated or false.”
This week, a related HuffPost report added, “He’s claimed he lost ‘hundreds’ of friends that day, but never named any. Shortly after the towers fell, he bragged that he now owned the tallest building in lower Manhattan, which was both insensitive and untrue. He’s said he witnessed people jump from the Twin Towers from the windows in his apartment in Trump Tower, which was four miles away. And he has insisted — falsely — that he saw ‘thousands’ of Muslims ‘cheering’ the attacks in Jersey City, New Jersey.”
For good measure, let’s also not forget that Trump has repeatedly lied about predicting Osama bin Laden’s rise, and just two years ago, he thought it would be a good idea to attend a Sept. 11 remembrance alongside a right-wing influencer who’s peddled radical and false conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks having been “an inside job.”
In other words, when it comes to 9/11, Trump’s credibility couldn’t be much worse.
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