WSJ: Trump and 9/11
Donald Trump’s reducing the events of 9/11 to a prop in his presidential campaign was beyond the pale.
The Wall Street Journal
October 21, 2015
Notwithstanding his feud with Jeb Bush, it is good that Donald Trump has revisited the event known everywhere as 9/11. It brings the subject of 9/11 back into view. It was always possible that the physical reality of Sept. 11, 2001, would fade from public memory, or that the events of that day would turn into not much more than a number—9/11.
Resurrecting the subject on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Trump said in the most recent version of his thoughts on 9/11: “Look, Jeb said we were safe with my brother. We were safe. Well, the World Trade Center just fell down.”
As one who was unfortunate enough to be standing on the ground that morning to watch the fall of the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan, memories of the event always sit close to the surface. For me, the singular image is of watching the north tower in flames, with pieces of shining metal floating off the building, and suddenly seeing that one piece was not metal but a person, tumbling down from the top floor to the ground. Others followed.
Walking north after the second tower collapsed, one was told that an airliner had flown into the side of the Pentagon. And later, of course, we learned of the passengers who died to divert United Flight 93 into a Pennsylvania field.
So I have to say, with all respect to Mr. Trump’s easily offended supporters: For Donald Trump to suggest in his syntactically vague fashion that former President George W. Bush bears blame for Sept. 11, which occurred nine months after he assumed office; or for Donald Trump to revisit 9/11 to promote his thoughts on immigration, is frankly disgusting. His remark about President Bush is an utter falsity, and it demeaned the reality of what happened that day.
In this week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll of Republican presidential preferences, Mr. Trump sits on top with 25%. The polling suggests that this 25% spreads across many layers of the electorate. We are exploring the outer limits of how much falsity America’s “angry” people will choke down.
The phenomenon of internalizing rank falsity on behalf of presumably greater goals is bipartisan, as witness the massive Democratic effort this week to dismiss as a waste of time Thursday’s House hearing to establish where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was and what she was doing on an another Sept. 11, in 2012, when organized Islamic jihadists killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi.
We know that the YouTube video, initially cited by the administration’s Susan Rice, was not the cause of the attack. But that assertion misdirected responsibility for days into the media ethers.
Just as Mr. Trump suggested responsibility for 9/11 lies somehow with former President Bush, Mrs. Clinton’s view has been that responsibility for the failure in Benghazi is so diffuse that no one is responsible, that asking questions about what happened is a political attempt to “come after me. ” What difference does it make is now the Democrats’ official account. As with Donald Trump’s politicized recollections of 9/11, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are on board for her shriveled version of Benghazi’s reality.
What a spectacle it would be to have America’s highest office contested next year between these two.
Beyond the circle of Mr. Trump’s supporters there is widespread incomprehension about what he represents. This is especially so among the standard-model political candidates—Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Chris Christie—all relegated to surprisingly weak levels of public support.
The best summarizer of our condition is, as earlier, Bob Dylan: “Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”
The person who holds the key to understanding what’s happening here is Ben Carson.
His rise to second place in the GOP polling is more baffling to many than Donald Trump, the prime-time celebrity. For nearly 30 years, Mr. Carson was a highly focused super doc, performing neurosurgery on infants and children. Then in 2013 he entered the world of American politics full time.
I think Ben Carson is best understood as a Connecticut Yankee in King Obama’s court. Transported from the surgery room to traveling through Barack Obama’s America, Mr. Carson is asking the simple, obvious and widely shared question: What the heck has been going on here? How did we get engulfed in so much cultural and political falsity, so much B.S.?
That is the zeitgeist, the blunt reality, that a brilliant naif like Ben Carson has tapped into, but that the standard politicians have not. Across seven years, much of the electorate has been in a difficult passage from Barack Obama’s early hope to final disillusion. Jeb and the others aren’t capturing the depths of the public’s emotional, political and economic disorientation.
Donald Trump fits for now, but poorly. He isn’t the leader of a movement. He’s an impresario of sensations. Reducing 9/11 to a political prop was indeed sensational. It was also beyond the pale.
Notwithstanding his feud with Jeb Bush, it is good that Donald Trump has revisited the event known everywhere as 9/11. It brings the subject of 9/11 back into view. It was always possible that the physical reality of Sept. 11, 2001, would fade from public memory, or that the events of that day would turn into not much more than a number—9/11.
Resurrecting the subject on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Trump said in the most recent version of his thoughts on 9/11: “Look, Jeb said we were safe with my brother. We were safe. Well, the World Trade Center just fell down.”
As one who was unfortunate enough to be standing on the ground that morning to watch the fall of the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan, memories of the event always sit close to the surface. For me, the singular image is of watching the north tower in flames, with pieces of shining metal floating off the building, and suddenly seeing that one piece was not metal but a person, tumbling down from the top floor to the ground. Others followed.
Walking north after the second tower collapsed, one was told that an airliner had flown into the side of the Pentagon. And later, of course, we learned of the passengers who died to divert United Flight 93 into a Pennsylvania field.
So I have to say, with all respect to Mr. Trump’s easily offended supporters: For Donald Trump to suggest in his syntactically vague fashion that former President George W. Bush bears blame for Sept. 11, which occurred nine months after he assumed office; or for Donald Trump to revisit 9/11 to promote his thoughts on immigration, is frankly disgusting. His remark about President Bush is an utter falsity, and it demeaned the reality of what happened that day.
In this week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll of Republican presidential preferences, Mr. Trump sits on top with 25%. The polling suggests that this 25% spreads across many layers of the electorate. We are exploring the outer limits of how much falsity America’s “angry” people will choke down.
The phenomenon of internalizing rank falsity on behalf of presumably greater goals is bipartisan, as witness the massive Democratic effort this week to dismiss as a waste of time Thursday’s House hearing to establish where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was and what she was doing on an another Sept. 11, in 2012, when organized Islamic jihadists killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi.
We know that the YouTube video, initially cited by the administration’s Susan Rice, was not the cause of the attack. But that assertion misdirected responsibility for days into the media ethers.
Just as Mr. Trump suggested responsibility for 9/11 lies somehow with former President Bush, Mrs. Clinton’s view has been that responsibility for the failure in Benghazi is so diffuse that no one is responsible, that asking questions about what happened is a political attempt to “come after me. ” What difference does it make is now the Democrats’ official account. As with Donald Trump’s politicized recollections of 9/11, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are on board for her shriveled version of Benghazi’s reality.
What a spectacle it would be to have America’s highest office contested next year between these two.
Beyond the circle of Mr. Trump’s supporters there is widespread incomprehension about what he represents. This is especially so among the standard-model political candidates—Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Chris Christie—all relegated to surprisingly weak levels of public support.
The best summarizer of our condition is, as earlier, Bob Dylan: “Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”
The person who holds the key to understanding what’s happening here is Ben Carson.
His rise to second place in the GOP polling is more baffling to many than Donald Trump, the prime-time celebrity. For nearly 30 years, Mr. Carson was a highly focused super doc, performing neurosurgery on infants and children. Then in 2013 he entered the world of American politics full time.
I think Ben Carson is best understood as a Connecticut Yankee in King Obama’s court. Transported from the surgery room to traveling through Barack Obama’s America, Mr. Carson is asking the simple, obvious and widely shared question: What the heck has been going on here? How did we get engulfed in so much cultural and political falsity, so much B.S.?
That is the zeitgeist, the blunt reality, that a brilliant naif like Ben Carson has tapped into, but that the standard politicians have not. Across seven years, much of the electorate has been in a difficult passage from Barack Obama’s early hope to final disillusion. Jeb and the others aren’t capturing the depths of the public’s emotional, political and economic disorientation.
Donald Trump fits for now, but poorly. He isn’t the leader of a movement. He’s an impresario of sensations. Reducing 9/11 to a political prop was indeed sensational. It was also beyond the pale.
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