Before signing a bill granting compensation to 9/11 first responders, President Donald Trump informed those assembled in the Rose Garden that though he doesn’t consider himself a first responder, he was “down there.”
“I spent a lot of time down there with you,” he added.
Trump: I don’t consider myself a 9/11 first responder. But I was kinda a 9/11 first responder. pic.twitter.com/NXh0KgumYA
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 29, 2019
It’s not the first time Trump has done this pseudo-valor stealing, claiming that he was on the scene, helping, just after the towers were hit.
During a 2016 campaign stop, he struck a similar note:
“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, per the Washington Post. “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.”
Here’s a good roundup of the New York native’s odd tendency to use the city’s greatest tragedy for personal aggrandizement and/or demonization of other groups.
