Politics
Families Hold Sign At 9/11 Memorial Reading 'It Was Saudi Arabia' For 25th Consecutive Year
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
LOWER MANHATTAN, NEW YORK. On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, family members of the 2,977 people killed gathered at the memorial reflecting pools in Lower Manhattan, read the names of the dead, and, as has become tradition, asked the President of the United States if perhaps this year he would be willing to take a look at Saudi Arabia.
The request has now been submitted to George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump (the first time), Joe Biden, and Donald Trump (again), none of whom have found a mutually convenient moment to follow up on it.
The families are specifically calling on Trump to declassify remaining government documents related to the Saudi government's alleged role in organizing and financing the attacks, a thing that intelligence officials, congressional investigators, and the 9/11 Commission itself have been gently circling for two decades with the energy of a dog that will not go inside.
Trump, who spent the weeks immediately before the ceremony finalizing a $600 billion economic agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and accepting an honor from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that included a ceremonial sword and a gold medal the size of a dinner plate, said at the memorial that September 11 was a very terrible day and that America would never forget.
"We will never, ever forget," Trump told the crowd. "Never." He did not specify what, precisely, would never be forgotten, which gave the sentence a flexibility that those familiar with his Saudi schedule found notable.
Lori Mogul, whose brother was killed in the North Tower, told reporters after the ceremony that the families were not asking for anything complicated. "We are asking him to read a document that already exists," she said. "It was written by the government. The government wrote it. We just want him to release it." She has been saying versions of this sentence since 2003 and reports that the sentence has not yet worked.
Trump's relationship with Saudi Arabia has, over the course of two administrations, generated approximately fourteen thousand words of official concern from Democrats, approximately fourteen thousand words of official concern from Republicans when Democrats were doing it, and zero policy changes from either. The bipartisan math here is the cleanest thing in Washington.
The Saudi government has denied any institutional involvement in the attacks, a position it has maintained with the calm of an entity that has read the arms procurement numbers and done the relevant arithmetic.
Former Trump adviser and man who has been in more rooms than seems possible, Jared Kushner, whose real estate firm received a two-billion-dollar investment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund in 2021, said in a statement that he has always believed in bringing people together and that the region has changed enormously. He did not specify which region. He never does.
The families say they will return next year.
Saudi Arabia says it looks forward to continued partnership with the United States.
The reflecting pools, for their part, reflect.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-11/some-9-11-families-use-ceremony-to-push-trump-on-saudi-arabia