The worst day ever. A day where even Howard Stern went into News mode and stopped all on air humor. By 10 am the entire national character was changed forever.
The Donald’s Self Centered 9-11 Lies
What didn’t change that day was Donald Trump’s penchant for self centered grandiose lying. The buildings had just fallen when he started off a blue streak of horrible lies that continues to this day. The only person who had a 9-11 as emotionally fulfilling as Trump would be Osama bin-Laden.
And every 9-11 since Trump has refreshed and updated his lies. Always bigger than the previous years. Remember how badly he screwed the pooch last 9-11? A day where he acted a little worse every hour. The fact is the president is plain old bad with serious things like death, the death of a military hero, the death of a rival politician, the death of an average citizen, He always speaks horribly and never offers anything in the way of comfort (unless you count violent retribution).
Failing to show any compassion in the face of national tragedies has been Trump’s true north. Be it defending Nazis, disappearing completely when gun violence by angry right wingers unfolds, trashing the late John McCain or making grandiose false claims in the face of bigger tragedies, like the Hurricane that he wont admit devastated Puerto Rico. Trump’s been a total bust in a role where the nation used to look to get a few sober words of encouragement from their leaders.
In New York Trump was already old news and no one was overly surprised he said outrageous hard to believe things. Mostly because everyone except Trump and Giuliani were emotionally overwhelmed and not reading Page 6 to see Trump’s crazy claims.
The things Trump did and said revolving around 9-11 were just plain disgusting. From gloating THAT DAY as the fire raged, falsely claiming he now had the biggest building in Manhattan, to the delusions he saw people falling from the building from his vantage point 4 miles away, to the “thousands of arabs dancing on the rooftops celebrating” when the buildings fell.
Shamelessly taking 150K in Federal Aid he probably didn’t deserve and definitely didn’t need was the first thing he did when the dust started to settle.
Needless to say there was no aspect of 9-11 Donald Trump didn’t personally appropriate, Notably saying “I lost hundreds of friends”. It’s almost laughable if it wasn’t so serious. It would mean Tump knew about one out of every ten people who died in the Towers. Does anyone believe he ever had hundreds of friends to begin with? How many friends do you have? How many of them work in the same quarter-mile area? Yeah it was downtown Manhattan, but knowing ‘hundreds of people” in just the Towers? Thats like as likely as having both your children become left-handed starting pitchers for the Yankees kid of a long shot. It’s a damned lie.
The biggest lies Trump has uncorked about 9-11 have mostly been about seeing a massive celebration of arabs dancing in the streets of Newark when the Towers fell. Maybe the most notable thing about this lie, first recorded in 2015, is that its the first time he ever sees a large crowd that isn’t there.
Maybe these are some of the same imaginary people he saw at his inauguration? That particular shindig, which Trump’s lied non stop about, sometimes claiming it was “a million people”, had far less than a third as many people at it as President Obama turned out in 2009, where it really was close to TWO MILLION people on hand in the moment in DC. So it’s a notable first as far as outright hallucinations the ‘president’ occasionally has.
Back to Trump’s extraordinary claim. I personally refute it based on the fact I lived through the same events here in the New York City area and can tell you it absolutely would have ended in murder if you tried to be happy and start dancing the day 9-11 happened. It wouldn’t have been something only one person ever saw. The people who did something like that would have been jailed for inciting a riot the moment such behavior began if someone didn’t simply attack them first.
Anyone who had attempted to dance and celebrate on 9-11 would have been physically attacked, possibly killed and the killers would have gotten Community Service on 9-11. Where’s the police records? Where’s the Emergency Room records? Where are the court records for the crimes this would have sparked. Where’s even one other witness to this massive display?
The Bully in the Bully Pulpit resurrects this day far too often. And always for far too little. In this case it’s just his mean-spirited nature can’t miss a chance to attack a minority female and its wrapped up in 9-11 to disguise his attack. I feel like it comes off as part of his whole hatred of women and minorities more than anything else.
The day of 9-11 was horrifying and wouldn’t end. Only Trump found a way to celebrate that day. Trump knows an ignorant cottage industry sprung up around 9-11 and when he lies about it it’s just a mentally ill guy looking to create other mentally ill people to hang out with.
It’s strange that History will have no choice but to call Trump “a powerful, seductive voice” but it just will. He’s led Marine Generals and captains of Industry off of cliffs. And still they keep falling in line to fall of that cliff. It’s plain old hard to fathom how anyone finds him well spoken or compelling enough for the label to fit but it is what it is.
Trump Vs Omar
Right now we have a lot of anger being stoked by Trump taking some out of context quotes from Rep Ihan Omar, who isn’t the best speaker, and trying to make it into an endorsement of the Attacks. Honestly the twitter meme Trump sent out was pretty low and creepy and fits with the idea he’s working with Putin to divide Americans.
The out of context audio clip by Omar was bad enough without looping it and juxtaposing it with the worst moments of 9-11. Like 7 times in a row. Ihan Omar, elected from the sae state that gave us Michele Bachmann, is something of a poorly spoken novice as a freshman House of Representatives member from Minnesota. While she may need charm school she seems to have only said true things in a way that some people have either been offended by or opted to seize on. It’s not too hard to make her look bad.
When it comes to 9-11 I’m a lot less prone to be upset or offended by someone understating the whole thing than I do with a person who misappropriates it and co-opts it to advance their own egotistical designs.
So the real Trolls of 9-11 have always been Donald Trump and Ann Coulter, not necessarily in that order at any given time, but really, no one’s said anything that comes close to what these two have said.
