Donald Trump on Tuesday offered a New York Post opinion piece from 2001 as the latest defense of his claim that “thousands and thousands” of Muslim Americans celebrated the 9/11 attacks.
“Look at the editorial I was just sent from the NY Post on 9/14/01 — 3 days after collapse of WTC. Any apologies?” the Republican presidential candidate tweeted with screenshots of the column.
{mosads}The opinion piece shown in Trump’s tweet says that Egyptians, Palestinians and Arabs in Paterson, N.J., celebrated when hearing of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
The report also noted that then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani warned citizens against taking out their anger on Arab and Muslim residents in the city.
Giuliani said earlier Tuesday on CNN’s “New Day” that while there were some American Muslims celebrating the attack, Trump is “exaggerating” when he says thousands were cheering.
“We did have some celebrating, that is true,” Giuliani said on the CNN. “We had pockets of celebration some in Queens, some in Brooklyn — 10, 12, 30, 40” people.
“If thousands of people were demonstrating and he saw it on television, then there must be some tape of it somewhere. If it shows up it will corroborate him. If it doesn’t show up it’s going to make him look really bad,” Giuliani said.
Trump also posted video of radio host Curtis Sliwa saying that people were cheering when the World Trade Center towers went down.
Several other politicians from the area and independent fact-checkers have disputed Trump’s claim about thousands of Muslim Americans cheering, as well as some GOP rivals.
“It didn’t happen,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told ABC News on Monday. Christie added in another interview with CNN that Trump’s claim was “just wrong. It’s factually wrong.”