Heroic Future President on the Day of the Attacks

 

Each time President Trump tells us what he saw and did on the day of the attacks, his actions in the aftermath become even more courageous.

This year offered a new milestone in the saga of 9/11. Someone born on that day can now register to vote. It has been 18 years.

At a Pentagon ceremony, President Trump was modest about his own heroic actions on the day of the attack.

Soon after, I went down to Ground Zero with men who worked for me to try to help in any little way that we could. We were not alone. So many others were scattered around trying to do the same. They were all trying to help.

This seemed to contradict the version presented on that day, as Mr. Trump was interviewed in the hours after the second tower of the World Trade Center fell. He made no mention then of having been at the scene. After a reference to one of his own properties, he relayed to television anchors information he said he was getting by telephone from an employee who was a few blocks away from the collapsed buildings.

And then when they built the World Trade Center it became known as the second tallest. And now it’s the tallest.

And I just spoke to my people, and they said it’s the most unbelievable sight. It’s probably seven or eight blocks away from the World Trade Center, and yet Wall Street is littered with two feet of stone and brick and mortar and steel.

Donald Trump Calls Into WWOR/UPN 9 News on 9/11

Richard Alles was a Fire Department battalion chief who later became deputy chief with the New York City Fire Department. He was at the scene within 20 minutes after the attack, supervising rescue efforts. He was asked about how Mr. Trump and his crew had helped at that dangerous time.

This is the first I’m hearing of it. There would have been no need for that. Between police, fire and the construction crews, we had it all covered.

Interviewed by Bethania Palma for Snopes

It could be a collapsing of timelines. 18 years is long enough to get days confused. Two days after the attacks, Mr. Trump told a German newscast that he had, that day, been to the attack site for the first time.

Well, I just went to what they call Ground Zero. I’ve never seen anything like it. The devastation, the human life that’s been just wasted for no reason whatsoever. It is a terrible scene, a terrible sight. But New York is very strong and resilient, and they’ll rebuild quickly.

Still, even two days later, actively working at the site was an act of courage. Not every injury caused by the 9/11 attacks in 2001 happened on 9/11. In the days following, the priority was to find and save survivors. But officials were mindful of the dangers that still existed. As Mr. Trump explained to the German reporter two days after the attack:

Well, I have a lot of men down here right now, we have over 100 or we have about 125 coming, so we’ll have a couple of hundred people down here and they’re very brave in what they’re doing is amazing.

The work was dangerous. For construction rescuers, for architectural experts, and for business executives like Mr. Trump. Precautions were taken wherever possible to protect workers and the public from further injuries, but serious injuries did happen.

Years later, John Feal spoke by phone to the reporter tracking down rumors surrounding the attacks.

There was no way anyone could get in and out of there without a [government-issued] badge.

Interviewed by Bethania Palma for Snopes

John Feal had such a badge. He was a construction demolition expert who worked on the site in the aftermath. A falling beam crushed his foot. His leg had to be amputated. He has no memory of a Trump led contingent of workers. And there is no record of badges being issued to Mr. Trump or a Trump-led group of hundreds of employees.

What records are available, from the Trump organization at the time, indicate a couple of dozen people were employed, none of them construction workers.

There are other details in my President’s narration this year that, taken by themselves, may demonstrate only tiny ripples of memory slanted over time. But when many such ripples combine with an unfortunate reputation of falsehoods, they can become a sweeping tsunami of unbelieved claims.

I vividly remember when I first heard the news. I was sitting at home watching a major business television show early that morning. Jack Welch, the legendary head of General Electric, was about to be interviewed when all of a sudden they cut away. At first, there were different reports: It was a boiler fire, but I knew that boilers aren’t at the top of a building. It was a kitchen explosion in Windows on the World. Nobody really knew what happened. There was great confusion.

President Trump, at the Pentagon, 9/11/2019

The boiler story is odd. Reporters have found no contemporary broadcast reports that match. In fact, the earliest, otherwise very confused, reports did include the plane collisions. From CNBC that morning:

…and how do you determine the value? Is it a matter of…

I’m sorry I’m going to interrupt you, right now. We have what appears to be a very serious … Is that the World Trade Tower? [Off camera voices: Yeah, yeah it is.] This is our… [Off camera voice: A plane hit it?] … They think so. This is one of the towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan which is clearly heavily involved in a smoke situation and one would assume there is fire.

No theories of boiler fires. None about a kitchen explosion. Just a plane strike.

Mr. Trump tells us he was sitting in his apartment watching television when reports of the attack began. He rushed to his window in time to witness the second plane hit.

I was looking out of a window from a building in Midtown Manhattan, directly at the World Trade Center, when I saw a second plane, at a tremendous speed, go into the second tower. It was then that I realized the world was going to change. I was no longer going to be — and it could never, ever be — that innocent place that I thought it was.

At a campaign rally in 2015, Mr. Trump added a little more drama. He had watched from the window of his New York apartment, and saw victims jumping from the towers to their deaths. It turns out his apartment was four miles away, making his eyesight a medical marvel. Intervening buildings make even his eyewitness claims of the second plane strike less plausible.

What seems more likely is his initial interview the morning of the attacks:

But I have somebody that was down there who witnessed at least 10 people jumping out of the building from 70 and 80 stories up in the air.

No eyewitnessing. Someone was telling him about it.

Maybe.

It is an unfortunate irony that the 9/11 narrative we are asked to believe comes just a week after sharpie-gate. A cover up of what started as an innocent mistake by a President eventually morphed into lies backed by threats of retribution by the Secretary of Commerce, the Presidential Chief of Staff, and the President himself.

The 9/11 heroism is an appealing image. Genuine rescuers are joined by a future President of the United States. A business executive rushing through the smoke as others are fleeing in the opposite direction. A leader risking his own well being to plow through the rubble, rescuing survivors.

And then, there is the interview two days later:

I’ve never seen anything like it.

Yeah, never happened sounds more likely.

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