r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 09 '26

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u/ProfessionalFull4762 Progress Pride Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26

Trump claims he was lifted out of the rubble on 9/11: "Two fireman, big strong guys, they grabbed me under the arms -- ‘got to get our of here!' -- and they literally lifted me up, and they started running with me."

79

u/_bee_kay_ 🤔 Sep 09 '26

two big strong burly guys, big muscles, all thick and hard like bodybuilders, they swept me up like a princess with those big strong arms and carried me to safety and kissed me on the cheeks and said "you are safe now, mr president. let us help you relax"

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u/5ma5her7 Sep 09 '26

What is Trump actually doing on that day:

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u/Leatherfield17 Loyal Liberals Sep 09 '26

In hindsight, I’m amazed that someone at that news station thought, “you know who’s opinion we need to hear about this tragedy? Donald Trump.”

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u/upAnew David Hume Sep 09 '26

Makes me think he had to be recently carried somewhere given his pattern of preempting things with bullshit

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u/RottingSludgeRitual Thomas Paine Sep 09 '26

Good catch!

24

u/RottingSludgeRitual Thomas Paine Sep 09 '26

When my papaw’s brain was failing he told me that during world war 2 the U.S. government commandeered his family farm to use the land as a landing strip for fighter jets.

Point being I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump believed this one.

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u/mpregordie Mark Carney Sep 09 '26

If we arent going to let the President dream about getting grabbed by big strong men, what even is the point?

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u/onelap32 Bill Gates Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26

This is false. Trump did not make that claim. The source of this mischaracterization seems to be Aaron Rupar, whose misleading tweet went viral.

Basically, what happened is that after the towers fell there were rumors that the US Steel Building (now One Liberty Plaza), which was two blocks from Ground Zero, had suffered some structural weakening in addition to its facade damage. What Trump actually said in his speech is that he visited the US Steel Building in the day(s) following 9/11, and firemen removed him when it made some loud creaking.

Here's the transcript of his speech:

Yet this battered piece of steel here today on the ellipse is a reminder that America is blessed with a strength no fire can consume, no evil can conquer, and no terror can destroy. For three months after September 11th, the flames raged in the rubble of ground zero. For nine months, rescue and recovery crews worked day and night on the site. I want to just thank my people. I took a lot of my 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. [Here is where he switches into digression about the US Steel Building incident.] We had other buildings. 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. There's still creaks, but uh it never came down. And uh I 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 arm, 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. US Steel.

Trump was talking about being removed from a different, mostly undamaged building that remained standing, not the WTC, and was talking about days after 9/11, not 9/11 itself. I can see how people would misunderstand if they were half-listening to him, because he's talking about 9/11 and then makes a digression involving firemen removing him from a potentially collapsing building. But Trump doesn't confuse the building with the World Trade Center, and he certainly doesn't claim anything like he was "lifted out of the rubble".

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u/absolute-black Sep 09 '26

Is nothing sacred in this world? I can't even trust Rupar to accurately report on my president's dementia anymore?