As I watched the 9/11 25th Commemoration and listened with tears in my eyes as family members read the names of family members killed, I then grew angry. Our self involved president wouldn’t come to the New York memorial because he wasn’t allowed to speak. It wasn’t about him. He wasn’t interested. He would go to the Pentagon ceremony because he was he allowed to speak. It gets worse. After the ceremony, Trump was flying to his golf course in Ireland for the weekend. The White House said it would be easier to fly to Ireland from Andrews Air Force base outside of Washington than flying out of a commercial airport in New York. The disrespect is stunning. It would be like Lincoln skipping Gettysburg because it he had something more fun to do.
Every former president was there. Bush, Obama, Clinton and Biden who is fighting cancer. Bush has been to three ceremonies, the first, fifth and twenty-fifth. Obama has been to the tenth and twenty-fifth. Biden has been to the twentieth and twenty-fifth. All three also visited the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa. on the same day. That’s what leaders do to show the nation they share in our grief and remembrance.
Trump has told stories about what he did on 9/11 that have not been verified. He claims he took a construction crew down to Ground Zero to help out and firefighters helped him through the rubble. He’s also is quoted as saying that now that the Towers were down one of his buildings was now the tallest in the city.
This after two days of what some called “Trumpapaplooza”. A made up “convention” in Dallas to rally the MAGA crowd to make sure they voted in the mid-term elections. He ranted for two night for how people should pretend he’s on the ballot. He committed what clearly sounds like soliciting a bribe to voters. He said he would send a five thousand dollar check to every adult American if the Republicans maintained control of the House and Senate. The definition of a bribe is “the act of offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting something of value to unlawfully influence the actions or decisions of a person in a position of power or public duty.” The voters are in a position of power and he’s trying to buy their votes. If you or I did this, we would be charged with a crime.
It’s painful and embarrassing to even write about this but we can’t be silent. We have to hold people, especially leaders, responsible for their behavior. All of us should feel the pain of those families who come every year to that hollowed ground. After twenty-five years, there are now grandchildren of those lost reading the names of grandparents they never knew but were kept alive by family memories. The names are chiseled in stone and should be spoken for all to hear.
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