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| Trump speaks at a rally in Buffalo, N.Y., on Monday. (Photo: Carlo Allegri/Reuters) |
At a rally in Buffalo, N.Y., Monday, the Republican frontrunner referred to the wrong date while recalling the 2001 terror attacks — a flub that was soon trending online. But it was a story about his own experience at Ground Zero that is drawing scrutiny.
“Everyone who helped clear the rubble — and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit — but I want to tell you: Those people were amazing,” Trump said. “Clearing the rubble. Trying to find additional lives. You didn’t know what was going to come down on all of us — and they handled it.”
The real estate mogul’s anecdote was meant to illustrate his “New York values” — a phrase that has become a conservative flashpoint in Trump’s battle with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the race for the GOP nomination.
But his assertion that he helped clear rubble in the search for 9/11 survivors is fraught with questions.
“Did he mean he picked up a few chunks of concrete?” Philip Bump writes in the Washington Post. “Sent staff to assist? It’s not clear.”
It’s clear that Trump was at or near Ground Zero in the days following the attacks.
New York Newsday spotted Trump there on Sept. 13, according to this excerpt cited in Bump’s report:
The workers are so worn out that they barely glance at the sight of Donald Trump, every hair in place and impeccably dressed in a black suit, pressed white shirt and red tie, walking into the plaza with his cellular phone to his ear. “No, no. The building’s gone,” he says into the phone.
The same day, standing three blocks from Ground Zero, Trump gave an interview to a German television reporter who asked the real estate mogul whether he would be involved in the reconstruction efforts.
“Well, I have a lot of men down here right now,” Trump replied. “We have over 100 and we have about 125 coming. So we’ll have a couple of hundred people down here.”
By Dylan Stableford.
Culled from Yahoo News.
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