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President Donald Trump mostly stuck to the script in his 9/11 speech Friday morning, speaking for just under 20 minutes outside the Pentagon about the horrors that unfolded that day while also sneaking in a handful of references to his war with Iran.
“We salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said to muted applause.
In other, more oblique mentions, he said America is “being tested today and we’re winning that test very handily” and that “there can only be victory.”
Trump’s speech failed entirely to acknowledge the help of America’s allies, both on Sept. 11 and in the decades of conflict to follow.
After the attack, 38 planes carrying more than 6,500 passengers were grounded in Newfoundland, Canada, at Gander International Airport. The tiny town of Gander (population 10,000) more than rose to the occasion, with some residents hosting passengers in their own homes.
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Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who spoke at the Pentagon prior to Trump, made sure to acknowledge their help — and the sacrifices made by NATO.
“NATO, for the first time in its history, under article five, declared that an attack upon one was an attack upon all, and in Canada ordinary citizens took in stranded travelers, complete strangers,” she noted. “They took them into their homes, often for days at a time.”
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