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On the 20th anniversary of the attacks, Trump turned remembrance into a political grievance machine — and managed to drag Robert E. Lee into Afghanistan for good measure.
On September 11, 2021, Donald Trump used the 20th anniversary of the attacks to attack Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, object to the symbolism of the Sept. 11 deadline, and then compound the whole mess with a bizarre claim that Robert E. Lee would have won the war. The result was a reminder that Trump’s first instinct on solemn national days is still to convert them into a rage-content opportunity. The backlash was immediate, and in some cases came from people who otherwise might have been sympathetic to his broader anti-withdrawal argument. It was a self-inflicted credibility hit on a day when he could have simply stayed quiet and let the occasion do the work for him.
The Trump brand on September 11 is still the same old formula: make it about him, then act surprised when everyone notices. On the 20th anniversary, that formula produced a garish little pileup of bad timing, bad judgment, and even worse historical comparison.
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For the 20th anniversary of the attacks, Trump released a video that began with solemn remembrance and then quickly shifted into an attack on Biden over Afghanistan. That move undercut the solemnity of the day and revived the exact complaint Trump was trying to make about Biden’s withdrawal deadline. The optics were simple: he took a national memorial moment and repackaged it as a campaign-style jab.
Trump marked the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11 by arguing that if Robert E. Lee had been in charge of the war in Afghanistan, it would have ended in victory. The line landed as a grotesque historical comparison on a solemn day, and it instantly became the sort of quote that says more about the speaker than the subject. It also handed critics an easy opening to say that Trump still cannot resist turning even military remembrance into a performative provocation.
Donald Trump spent part of Sept. 11, 2021, with NYPD and FDNY personnel in New York City and was asked whether he would run again in 2024. He did not announce a campaign; he said it was an “easy question” and left the possibility open.