Donald Trump has appeared to claim that he predicted the 9/11 terror attacks before they happened and that he was aware of Osama bin Laden.
Speaking at Naval Station Norfolk on Sunday, Trump addressed a crowd of Navy personnel with a winding speech that mixed praise for America’s armed forces with political jabs and personal self-congratulation.
One moment that caught particular attention was his reassertion of a long-debunked claim regarding Osama bin Laden and the lead-up to 9/11.
Trumps Bizarre 9/11 Claim
People watched on as the President appeared to claim that he knew about the terror attacks that killed 2977 people in 2001.
“Please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, one year before he blew up the World Trade Center,” Trump said.
“I said, ‘You’ve gotta watch Osama bin Laden.’ And the fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true.
"But, I said one year before to Pete Hegseth, I said one year before, in the book, I wrote — whatever the hell the title,
"I can’t tell you, but I can tell you there’s a page in there devoted to the fact that I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden, and I didn’t like it, and ‘You’ve gotta take care of him.’”
He continued: “They didn’t do it. A year later, he blew up the World Trade Center.
"So, I gotta take a little credit because nobody else is gonna give it to me.
"You know the old story — they don’t give you credit, just take it yourself.”
Why Trump's Claims Don't Make Any Sense
The book Trump was referring to, The America We Deserve, was released in early 2000 — more than 18 months before the 9/11 attacks — and does mention bin Laden briefly.
But fact-checkers have repeatedly pointed out that Trump did not predict the attacks or suggest bin Laden should be taken out, per the Mirror.
Another point that people have spotted is regarding Trump's claim that he spoke to Pete Hegseth about bin Laden a year before 9/11 - but Hesgeth would have been in his early twenties and in college at the time.
The former president made similar remarks in the past, and Sunday’s speech wasn’t the first time he sought to claim foresight on Bin Laden’s threat.
During a 2021 interview, Trump even downplayed the al Qaeda leader’s impact while praising the military kills of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Iranian general Qasem Soleimani under his watch.
“We took out the founder of ISIS, al-Baghdadi, and then of course Soleimani,” Trump said.
“Osama bin Laden had one hit, and it was a bad one, in New York City, the World Trade Center.
"But these other two guys were monsters. They were monsters.”