The New York Times editorial board misrepresented comments that President Trump made in an interview following 9/11, stating that his “response” to the attacks was to brag about the size of a building he owned.
Trump on Monday reacted to news that authorities had raided the hotel room and work office of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense,” Trump said of the ongoing investigation, which he has described as a “witch hunt.”
The Times’ lead editorial published online Tuesday night responded to that, saying, “No, Mr. Trump — a true attack on America is what happened on, say, Sept. 11, 2001. Remember that one? Thousands of people lost their lives. Your response was to point out that the fall of the twin towers meant your building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan.”
The paper was referring to a phone interview Trump gave to a local New York Fox station but an examination of his comments suggest that Trump wasn’t boasting of his own real estate, but remarking on how New York was changed by the attack.
The interview lasted nearly 10 minutes, wherein Trump first says he could see the attack from his Trump Tower building.
“Well, I have a window that looks directly at the World Trade Center and I saw this huge explosion,” he said. “I was with a group of people and you really couldn’t even believe it. And even I think worse than that, for years, I’ve looked right directly at the building. I’d see the Empire State building in the foreground and the World Trade Center in the background. And now I’m looking at absolutely nothing. It’s just gone and it’s hard to believe.”
One of the anchors then says to Trump, “Your building, Trump Tower, is one of the great tourist attractions in the world. It’s well known universally. Are you taking any precautions there in light of what happened at the World Trade Center?”
Trump replies that there’s “little” he could do to prepare for a plane crashing into one of his properties. “ I guess maybe the world is going to be changing,” he added.
It isn’t until one of the anchors asks Trump about his “landmark” building at 40 Wall Street, which is about eight blocks from where the World Trade Center towers stood, that Trump mentions the comparison in size.
“Well it was an amazing phone call I made,” he said. “40 Wall Street actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan and actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest and then when they built the World Trade Center, became known as the second tallest and now it’s the tallest and I just spoke to my people and they said it’s the most unbelievable sight. It’s probably seven or eight blocks away from the World Trade Center and yet Wall Street is littered with two feet of stone and brick and mortar and steel.”
A third anchor then describes Trump as a “visionary” and asks how people should respond to the attacks.
“Well, I guess the big thing that you really will have to do is never forget,” he said. “You just can’t forget that something like this happened.”
He went on to say it’s “one of the sad things” that New York’s skyline would now be different and, “They were a great part of the skyline, and then when you look at the skyline after 2001, and then you see the skyline without these two buildings, You’re going to say what happened?”
In an email to the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, Times editorial writer Jesse Wegman acknowledged the context of Trump’s remarks and that he expressed sadness, but Wegman disputed that Trump’s remarks had been mischaracterized.
“Remember that he made that remark literally hours after the towers came down,” he said. “At the time, we still didn’t know whether 2,000 people were dead, or 20,000. It’s true that he also expressed upset about the attacks, and that the interviewer asked him directly about his own building, but he didn’t ask for a size comparison — nor, I think, would anyone think that would be an appropriate question for an interviewer to ask at that particular moment, or ever.”
