On Tuesday at a Tunnel to Towers event marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, President Trump stood with first responders, posthumously presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the family of 9/11 hero Welles Crowther, and vowed to "never forget" those lost. Naturally, any liberal media coverage of the event trashed Trump's presentation, something that didn't fly with both a Republican and Democrat guest on CNN's The Source with Kaitlan Collins. Even more surprising, this led to the trashing of their own fact-checker.
Collins began: "At an event today honoring 9/11 first responders, President Trump made questionable claims about his own experience near ground zero following the terrorist attacks." She then played a clip from Trump's address.
I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened, and they were -- they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people. Wasn't too much we could do. I'll be honest; it was -- it was raw. Nobody's seen anything like it ever. We had other buildings. The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks. But it never came down, and I'll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen -- big, strong guys -- and I'm not the smallest guy in the world -- they grabbed me under the arms, said, "got to get out of here." And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, "Fellas, I can run myself." But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down; it didn't come down. U.S. Steel.
Collins then went to work, with no interest in anything Trump did or said, except for that 58 second clip from a 26 minute speech:
He was not near the World Trade Center on 9/11. That's because we know he was miles away at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. And tonight, he wrote online, "I was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter."
Yes, the President had noted in his speech that he saw the damage from his office window, never claiming to be there on 9/11.
Collins then turned to CNN fact-checker Danial Dale, and there were no surprises.
The President has told a lot of stories about his role on 9/11 in the aftermath, throughout the years. He's claiming tonight that everything he said there was entirely accurate. Is there any evidence for that?
Shouldn't the question be, is there any evidence that what Trump said is inaccurate? Alas, Dale seethed:
The record shows, Caitlin, that at least some of the story is misleading at best. While there is no evidence whatsoever for other parts of it. So, what's misleading? Wel, I think you mentioned the thing that's first and foremost, I think he at least left open the impression that this supposed incident in which he was whisked away by big, strong firemen happened on 9/11 itself. And, again, we know that he was at Trump Tower.
Repeat: Trump never said he was at Ground Zero on 9/11!
But Dale had more:
Now what lacks evidence? Well, he -- the larger premise of the story is that he was down in the vicinity of ground zero with his large crew of workers. He said, a lot of construction workers, on Truth Social tonight. He said that, for years. There is zero evidence anywhere in the public record that this actually happened.
Trump gave interviews on September 13, walking around the vicinity of Ground Zero, claiming to have a hundred men working down there.
Former Trump campaign advisor and CNN senior political commentator David Urban later took Dale to task: "My West Point roommate died, Doug Gurian died, as well as another good friend of mine, Doug Gardner, died on that day in the World Trade Center...So, I take all this stuff very seriously, and what the President said, that videotape that I watched and America watched, I don't get that at all."
Urban was just getting warmed up: "[T]o say somehow the President claimed that he was there on 9/11 is some sort of bizarre TDS that I just can't -- listen, I come on when -- I call balls and strikes. This one is clearly not even close to the strike zone."
The conservative commentator then went even harder in the paint against Dale:
Daniel Dale should be fact-checked on the fact-checking because the President wasn't saying that. He was saying, we went down there afterwards. It was a mess. Buildings were torn up. Things -- by the way, the U.S. Steel Building was kind of contiguous to the blast zone down there where everything collapsed. So, to attack the guy on that is picking pepper from -- I can't say, but -- but it's not -- it's not fair to do to the President in this situation, and I think move on. It's just ridiculous.
Next, former New Orleans Mayor, Democrat Mitch Landrieu, would criticize Trump for "making everything about himself", but would agree with Urban's main point of, well, moving on:
I cannot get it into my head that we're going to talk about Donald Trump as though he he was relevant to 9/11, given the suffering that took place on that day and how catastrophically bad. So I'm like, David, just let's move off of it because it's just not it's just not necessary.
Landrieu and Urban would continue their conversation, ultimately agreeing that this special anniversary should be used to bring the country together. In other words, a concept antithetical to the liberal, elitist media's agenda.
