I guess once you've "jumped the shark," anything is game and that certainly seems to be the case with Donald Trump, who has reshaped his story that he was carried away by two firefighters when the United States Steel tower collapsed a couple days after the World Trade Center towers. He allegedly had lent his work crew to help clean up the debris, but there are no records of this occurring or him ever being there.
He's knocked this story around for ten years, using it as a means to express his proximity to events and make it sound like he has some special insight. I suppose the "firemen" are symbolic of the brave warriors he knows he has to venerate even though it is himself he wants to put at the center of events.
The irony is he didn't attend the 25th anniversary memorial service in New York, choosing to go to the Pentagon instead, where he could give a speech. Not surprisingly, he and his right-hand man, Petey Hegseth, tried to make 9/11 all about Iran in a feeble attempt to defend their war. If it sounds familiar, Bush had used it to launch two wars that were totally unnecessary, which Trump criticized him for. No more "forever wars" Trump promised both in 2016 and again in 2024, but here we are in Iran with seemingly no easy way out without losing face, so the Commander-in-Chief presses on, hoping to rally his supporters behind him by echoing 9/11. If that doesn't work, he'll give every American adult 5000 bucks if they vote Republican in the midterms.
Fortunately, the New York memorial was a more somber affair. A moment of silence for the roughly 3000 persons who died at the World Trade Centers, tenants as well as first responders, many firemen and women included. Their names were read off one by one with former presidents and the mayor of New York on hand. They all stood silently. They didn't feel the need to make the event into their own personal moment of triumph. Bush later apologized, sort of anyway, for the perception that was given by his administration that Muslims were a war-like people.
It was important that Mamdani, the city's first Muslim mayor, was on hand even though many conservatives, including former Mayor Giuliani, expressly said they didn't want him there. Oddly enough, he was the one who provided the healing hand by releasing reams of documents that previous mayors had long kept sequestered. One would like to think we could finally get past all that bellicose rhetoric but sadly not.
The Republicans consider themselves the gatekeepers of 9/11. They are in a way, as it happened on their watch. No one paid much heed to the warnings and when it happened they used the event to launch their "war on terror" that continues to this day. Only now that "terror" has become much more diffuse, can stand for anything, including Democratic Socialist candidates that they believe threaten their way of life.
Trump just takes it one step further and makes it all about himself. I'm surprised he didn't carry those two firemen to safety, one on each arm, being the big man that he is. I suppose he understands his limits to some degree. No one would believe that story, not even his most faithful devotees.
Comments
Post a Comment