Trudy Rubin: Trump disses 25th anniversary memorial for 9/11 while opening the door to more terrorism at home

Who could have imagined, as we sat glued to the screen watching ash-covered victims frantically flee the falling World Trade Center towers, that the type of terrorism threatening us 25 years later would turn 9/11 on its head.

On that terrible day, Americans stood united against the assault, political rhetoric cast aside in the horrific moment. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, later to become a MAGA mouthpiece, became “America’s mayor” as he projected a message of calm resolve in news conferences held amid the ruins.

Nearly the entire world joined the United States in opposition to al-Qaeda, a multinational terrorist organization that murdered 3,000 men and women of many different nationalities in the twin towers attack. President George W. Bush, in perhaps his finest hour, reassured a shocked nation and built a multinational coalition to fight al-Qaeda.

Our NATO allies immediately volunteered for a war in which many of their brave soldiers died — including Canadians and Danes, whose armies President Donald Trump so frequently now insults.

That sense of unity, which impelled Americans to comfort strangers and inspired solidarity from allies and adversaries alike, has long since dissipated in the wake of forever wars and populist discontent. A divisive, America First president seems to delight in fomenting hatred between people of differing beliefs and ethnicities — and treating long-time allies like enemies.

What the Trump administration is doing is opening the door to a new breed of lone wolf terrorists, inspired by the internet. Such radicalized individual acts have primarily been carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers over the past years, according to detailed studies, although the low level of violent left-wing incidents has risen in 2025, in reaction to Trump policies.

But the president and his team have worked hard to dismantle the very agencies and have fired the FBI agents and U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors that handle terrorism cases. Elite counterterrorism and counterintelligence units have been gutted by hundreds of firings and resignations. At the U.S. Department of Homeland Security alone, more than 1,300 counterterrorism specialists have been axed or reassigned to work on border enforcement and deportations, or to search for nonexistent voter fraud.

What’s so stunning is that, just before the start of the current endless Iran war, with the White House still claiming Tehran is the leading sponsor of international terrorism, FBI Director Kash Patel specifically sacked about a dozen members of an elite Washington-based unit specializing in stemming threats from Iran within our country. Why? Because the agents had been involved in investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he ended his first term.

When asked in March by the New York Times whether Americans needed to worry about possible terrorist reprisals by Iran inside the U.S., Trump retorted: “I guess. Some people will die.”

Trump’s blindness is worse than the noncooperation between the FBI and the CIA in 2001 that led them to ignore clues to the monthslong presence of the 9/11 terrorists on U.S. soil. This is the willful blindness of our government to potential terror attacks by an Iranian regime that has every reason to strike in the near term.

Add to that the president’s constant incitement of his followers against so-called leftist networks, declaring “antifa” to be a dangerous terror organization. Only problem: There is no such organization; antifa is a catch-all term for loose groups across the country who declare themselves to be anti-fascist.

Compare that to the white supremacist massacre of 11 Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh during Trump’s first term, or the deadly truck attack by an Islamist on New Year’s Day 2025 in New Orleans. Yet Trump consistently, and determinedly defying statistics, declares domestic terrorism to be the work of the so-called left.

Such incitement is a cover story for attacking political criticism from any front, and inspires potential right-wing terrorist attacks against Trump’s political opponents. Never forget that it was right-wing terrorists who called for the murder of Vice President Mike Pence when they attacked the U.S. Capitol, who murdered two Minnesota lawmakers, and who nearly killed Paul Pelosi, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

Meantime, the president dispatches federal agents who could be thwarting real terrorism to instead threaten election officials and potentially midterm voters. Ditto for menacing noncriminal immigrants with violence and sometimes death.

As for state-run terrorism, Trump’s self-declared friend, Vladimir Putin, has embarked on a campaign against NATO allies, including dropping drones near airports such as the one in Leipzig, Germany, recently.

“We are the daily target of hybrid warfare,” said the German interior minister last month. The International Institute for Strategic Studies this summer tallied 144 drone incidents across 13 countries in less than two years, with Russia as the main culprit. And that doesn’t include the assassinations Moscow has conducted against former dissidents living in England and Germany and many arson and sabotage attacks across Europe.

And while you may think you have read much about the deliberate Russian destruction of civilian markets, malls, schools, universities, and cathedrals in Ukraine, you are probably unaware of the worst.

Just one example: In the city of Kherson, just across the river from Russian positions, Russian drone pilots play a game they call “human safari” and brag about it on their Telegram channels. It means getting a hapless vegetable seller in their sights, chasing him as he tries desperately to escape, and then finally killing him.

This is not warfare. It is deliberate terror, Nazi-style, to try to demoralize Ukrainians into surrendering their sovereignty.

And so, as we remember 9/11, as we repudiate the terrorist attackers, and recall the human error by U.S. officials that led to the deaths of 3,000 innocent souls, we should give serious thought to the Trump administration’s choices and rhetoric that open the door to more terrorist assaults.

Trump has refused to attend the 9/11 ceremonies in New York City, reportedly because he wouldn’t be allowed to make a speech. Instead, he will bloviate at the Pentagon alongside his “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, who is contributing to the president’s security blindness that exposes Americans to potential harm.

Shame on them for endangering the country by refusing to learn the lessons of that terrible day.

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