YOU GUESSED IT--DJT!
Trump is 💩 ·
Tony Pentimalli
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a day ago
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Ground Zero Offered Trump a Seat, Not a Stage
By Tony Pentimalli
Twenty-five years after September 11th, Donald Trump has apparently found one more way to make 9/11 about Donald Trump.
Trump had been planning to attend the 25th-anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City, but now he is not going. According to The New York Times, citing four people familiar with the planning, Trump decided against attending in part because he wanted to give a speech and the ceremony does not allow politicians to give speeches. Trump has not said that himself, but the reporting is specific and based on multiple sources.
There is nothing wrong with honoring September 11th at the Pentagon. One hundred eighty-four people were murdered there that morning, and the Pentagon is sacred 9/11 ground too. The problem is not where Trump is going. The problem is why he reportedly decided not to go where he had already planned to be.
Ground Zero has followed the same basic rule since 2012. Politicians can attend, but they do not get to give speeches. The ceremony belongs to the families, who read the names of the people they lost while presidents, governors and other officials sit down and listen. That rule exists because September 11th is not supposed to be another political stage. It is one of the few days in American life when politicians are expected to understand that nobody came to hear them talk.
Trump already knows this. He attended the Ground Zero ceremony in 2024 with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other officials, and nobody gave political remarks. He stood there under the same rules as everyone else.
This year Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are reportedly expected to attend. Three former presidents can apparently sit quietly while grieving families read the names of husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, firefighters, police officers and office workers who never came home. The sitting president reportedly wanted a speaking slot.
That would be ugly enough on its own, but Trump’s history with September 11th makes it worse. On the afternoon the towers fell, while Americans were still trying to understand the horror unfolding in New York, Trump went on television and talked about the height of his building at 40 Wall Street. He claimed that after the World Trade Center collapsed, his building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan. It was not even true. Thousands of people were dead or missing, Lower Manhattan was buried in smoke and ash, and Donald Trump still found a way to talk about his real estate.
Years later, he claimed that he had gone to Ground Zero with hundreds of his workers to help, but no evidence of a Trump crew that large has ever surfaced. He also claimed he watched “thousands and thousands” of people in New Jersey celebrating the attacks, another story that years of reporting and fact-checking failed to support.
Now, on the 25th anniversary, Ground Zero offered Trump a place among presidents, survivors, first responders and families who have carried this grief for a quarter century. It simply would not give him the microphone.
Then there is the Ireland trip. Trump is scheduled to leave for Ireland on September 12, the very next day, while the Irish Open is being held at Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg, a property owned by his family business. Reporting indicates that the logistics of that trip also played a role in the decision to mark 9/11 from Washington instead of New York. That does not prove Trump skipped Ground Zero so he could play golf, and we should not pretend it does. What it does show is bad enough: his desire to speak reportedly mattered, and travel tied to his family’s golf resort reportedly mattered too.
Ground Zero would not give him a microphone, and the next day his family’s golf property was waiting across the Atlantic.
The presidency is not supposed to be one endless fucking stage. Sometimes the job is to shut your mouth, stand behind grieving Americans and understand that the moment belongs to them. September 11th is one of those moments.
For twenty-five years, families have returned to Ground Zero to speak the names of the dead while presidents come to listen. That is the job.
Apparently, for Donald Trump, being president is still not enough if somebody else gets the microphone.
Waiting for the 'ultimate meltdown' from the QUEEN mole at about 0900!
can't wait to read this post later in the day!
