Politics
Trump Skips 9/11 Memorial To Visit Building He Personally Did Not Lose A Bet About
By Sean Vanity, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, four living former presidents, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden, will stand together at the World Trade Center memorial in Lower Manhattan to mark the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. President Donald Trump will be at the Pentagon.
The White House has characterized the split as logistically motivated, explaining that the President's schedule required a separate venue, a separate ceremony, and, presumably, a separate occasion to be the most important person in the room.
"The President has a deep and abiding respect for all of the sites associated with September 11," said a spokesperson who asked not to be named, "and he feels that the Pentagon represents a unique opportunity to honor the victims in a way that is consistent with his overall vision going forward."
Asked what that vision was, the spokesperson said the word "strength" four times and left.
The decision means Trump will be the only sitting or former president not at the World Trade Center site, where nearly three thousand people were killed, where the names are read aloud every year, where the pools reflect the sky in a way that makes grown men cry on sidewalks in front of strangers. Trump will be at a different building.
To be fair to the Pentagon, it was also attacked on September 11, 2001, killing 184 people, and it deserves to be commemorated. It is a real place where a real and terrible thing happened. It is also, notably, a place where Trump has never publicly claimed he watched the towers fall from his window, which he did claim about the World Trade Center, a claim that was false.
Sources familiar with the planning told BSN that the seating arrangement at the World Trade Center ceremony would have placed Trump near Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Biden, a configuration one aide described as "four people who have all said things about Donald Trump, seated next to Donald Trump, on television, for an hour."
Observers noted that the last time all four former presidents gathered publicly together, the event was widely described as dignified and moving. Observers also noted that Trump was not there for that one either.
Meanwhile, organizers at Ground Zero have confirmed that the ceremony will proceed as it has for a quarter century: the names read slowly, the silence held, the families standing in the specific terrible way that families stand when they have been standing in that same spot for twenty-five years and the rest of the country has mostly gone back to normal.
Trump, for his part, posted on Truth Social Wednesday night that September 11 was "a day we will NEVER forget" and that America is "stronger than ever," which are the two sentences every American politician has written on this day for twenty-five years, assembled in the correct order, meaning nothing and everything simultaneously.
The Pentagon ceremony is expected to last approximately one hour. Trump is expected to speak.
At the World Trade Center, they will read 2,977 names. That takes longer.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/september-11-terrorist-attacks-25-years-memorial-2026-09-11/