This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated September 9, 2022
Last week, retired NYPD officer Thomas Webster was sentenced to ten years in prison for brutally attacking a Washington officer during the January 6 insurrection, the longest sentence yet. Just hours after Webster and other rioters stormed the Capitol that day and assaulted law enforcement officers, New York GOP members of Congress Nicole Malliotakis and Lee Zeldin returned to the floor and voted to decertify the settled 2020 election.
Malliotakis and Zeldin are still on board with Trump and his election lies. Trump attended a Zeldin fundraiser last week, which helped the GOP gubernatorial candidate raise an additional $1.5 million, while Malliotakis eagerly accepted Trump’s official endorsement the week before. Yet neither of the New York Republicans had anything to say about Trump saying last week that he would like to pardon January 6 rioters if he won the presidency, nor did either object to Trump taking classified documents to Mar a Lago and subsequently hiding them from federal agencies when they were subpoenaed.
Reporting that broke on September 6 provided more details about some of the highly classified documents that Trump had illegally held at his Florida golf resort, with some of them relating to another nation’s nuclear weapons secrets. The ramifications from this are extremely dire, as they could compromise our nation’s most tightly guarded secrets, jeopardize the safety of human sources that allowed the U.S to have obtained this information, and risk nuclear weapons secrets falling into the wrong hands.
But as with everything else Trump, for many GOP electeds there seems to be no bottom to what they will cravenly accept in this man. Malliotakis and Zeldin were fine with voting lies and overturning a free and fair election, and it appears they are fine with Trump stealing nuclear secrets and letting rioters who assaulted police officers off the hook.
As we remember 9/11 and how we were attacked twenty-one years ago, our focus will be on those we lost on that day, but as many conservative politicians make excuses for whatever horrible things Trump says or does, it is worth noting that some of the most reprehensible things he has ever said or done are directly related to 9/11.
When interviewed on WWOR-TV on September 11, 2001 after the Twin Towers fell, Trump bragged about his lower Manhattan property, saying, “now it’s the tallest,” something that was not actually true and that no normal, decent person would even consider in that moment.
In 2016, speaking of those who cleared rubble and searched for survivors, he claimed, “I helped a little bit.” Before 60 first responders at a 2020 White House ceremony, he said, “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder.” First responders who were actually at Ground Zero, like FDNY Deputy Chief Richard Alles who attended that 2020 White House ceremony, have made clear that Trump was not there.
He also took $150K from a program for small businesses hurt by 9/11, despite publicly saying none of his properties sustained damages, and he claimed he donated $10,000 to the 9/11 fund, which the New York City the Comptroller’s office verified never happened.
“I lost hundreds of friends in 9/11”
Donald Trump, February, 2016
He has stated that from his Midtown Trump Tower apartment, he watched firsthand as people jumped from the burning towers, something that is altogether impossible from 4 miles away. He has also claimed to have “lost hundreds of friends in 9/11,” yet he cannot name one and for that to be true, he would have had to have personally been friends with one in every ten people who died.
He once used the anniversary of 9/11 to tweet that he would “…like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th” and bragged in 2017 that his appearance on Face The Nation gave the show its highest ratings since 9/11.
Using the deadliest attack in our nation’s history to brag about how tall your building is or to boast about ratings is abhorrent. Lying about being at Ground Zero, watching victims die or fictitious donations to victims’ families is reprehensible. As many Republicans have done with those inexcusable actions, they will make excuses for, and even support, Trump jeopardizing our national security.
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