We already knew, before President Trump began his Tuesday morning speech commemorating 9/11, that he wasn’t going to visit New York. He doesn’t intend to travel to Ground Zero to stand alongside every other living U.S. president on Friday, where solemnity is expected and speeches aren’t allowed. Because rules be damned: Donald J. Trump was going to make a speech about that day, and that was that.
So today, in front of a 21-foot steel beam salvaged from the wreckage of the World Trade Center and transported to the Ellipse in front of the White House, he showed us what he talks about when he talks about Sept. 11, 2001.
