President Donald Trump has often reiterated a striking claim about Osama bin Laden, suggesting that he predicted the terrorist leader’s role in the September 11 attacks long before they occurred.
The claim, made during a conversation aboard Air Force One with reporters and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), has raised eyebrows as it appears to be unsupported by facts, particularly concerning Trump's 2000 book, The America We Deserve.
The False Claim Repeated
While en route to a meeting, Trump pivoted from a conversation about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who had been captured by U.S. forces on narco-terrorism charges, to a claim about bin Laden.
“Lindsey mentioned bin Laden. Do you know I wrote about bin Laden one year before the attack in the World Trade Center and I said, you got to go after bin Laden?” Trump asserted.
“It was in my book and very few people want to say that, but it was in my book.”
He further emphasized: “You know that I think you’ve actually talked about it,” referring to a reporter.
“But if they would have listened to me, they would have taken out bin Laden and you wouldn’t have had the World Trade Center tragedy.”
This claim is not new. Trump has made similar statements repeatedly, though fact-checkers and critics point out that the assertions do not align with the contents of his book.
What The America We Deserve Actually Says
In The America We Deserve, published in 2000, Trump does mention Osama bin Laden but in a very different context.
Trump refers to bin Laden as a shadowy figure with no fixed address, calling him public enemy number one.
However, he does not make any direct reference to taking action against bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.
Instead, Trump writes: “One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy number one, and US jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.”
While Trump hints at the possibility of a terrorist attack more significant than the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, there is no explicit connection between bin Laden and the 9/11 tragedy in the book, nor does he advocate for preemptive action against him.
The 2019 Reiteration: No Credit for the Prediction
Trump's claim resurfaced once again in 2019 when he suggested that he had been right all along about the threat posed by bin Laden.
During a press conference where he discussed the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump remarked: "In that book about a year before the World Trade Center was blown up, I said, ‘There’s somebody named Osama bin Laden. You’d better kill him or take him out.’”
He continued: “Let’s put it this way – if they would have listened to me, a lot of things would have been different.”
This statement also raised questions, as it seemed to contradict the historical timeline.
Bin Laden was already placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1999, well before Trump’s book was published, suggesting that the attention surrounding bin Laden was hardly a new revelation at the time.