Trump on 9/11: We’ll never submit to tyranny

PRESIDENT Donald Trump commemorated the victims of Flight 93 on Tuesday in Pennsylvania, praising the heroes who stopped a hijacked plane from reaching Washington, DC seventeen years ago. A quartet of plots in 2001 shook America’s collective sense of national security and signaled the global beginning of a new normal.

They ‘took their own fate, and America’s fate, into their own hands’ by storming the cockpit and forcing a group of jihadis to crash into a field instead of turning the United States Capitol building into a domed inferno.

‘America will never forget what your loved ones did for all of us,’ he told a crowd of hundreds.

‘They stopped the forces of terror and defeated this wicked, horrible, evil plan,’ Trump said, referring to ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ several times as ‘the enemy.’

According to Dailymail, his remarks came during an annual ceremony marking the 9/11 attacks that shook America’s collective sense of national security in 2001.

Speaking against the backdrop of wind turbines and mountaintops, Trump praised law enforcement and first responders while promising to do ‘everything in my power to prevent terrorists from striking American soil.’

He said the four planes were ‘hijacked by evil men bent on terror and conquest’ and promised to ‘never flinch in the face of evil.’

Trump and his wife Melania traveled to the rural town of Shanksville, where a California-bound commercial airliner crashed after the 40 passengers and crew members learned what was happening and attempted to regain control of the aircraft. Everyone on board was killed.

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Trump is a New York City native making his first visit as president to the site.

‘A piece of America’s heart is buried on these grounds, but in its place has grown a new resolve to live our lives with the same grace and courage as the heroes of Flight 93,’ he said.

‘This field is now a monument to American defiance’ that delivers ‘a message to the world: America will never, ever, submit to tyranny.’

At the Pentagon, a choked-up Vice President Mike Pence recalled the deaths of ‘little children just finding their way in the world’ when American Airlines Flight 77 brought down part of the Pentagon’s west wall.

‘There were new recruits and dedicated veterans, patriots all,’ he said.

But he recalled the teamwork as military brass and enlisted men and women rushed to crawl through the rubble for survivors.

‘I’ll never forget what I saw that day. I saw heroism. I saw strength,’ Pence said.

He also praised Trump for winning the largest budget increase for America’s military in the history of the nation, saying it would help the U.S. ‘drive ISIS from the face of the earth.’

Al Qaeda’s terrorists ‘looked to break our spirit and they failed,’ Pence said.

New York City marked the anniversary with a moment of silence at the site of the attacks on Tuesday morning.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, Rudy Giuliani, Nikki Haley, Bill de Blasio and Chris Christie were in attendance in New York.

Giuliani was the New York City mayor and Christie governor of New Jersey on the day Al Qaeda terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans with coordinated airliner hijackings and calculated crashes.

Americans nationwide commemorated the anniversary with somber tributes, volunteer projects and a new monument to victims Tuesday, after a year when two attacks demonstrated the enduring threat of terrorism in the nation’s biggest city.

Trump started the day tweeting about his domestic political enemies.

He was incensed about a new development in the investigation of a senior FBI agent caught conspiring with his lover to help ensure his defeat in 2016.

A text message revealed Monday night by a Republican Congressman shows Peter Strzok telling Lisa Page in April 2017 that they should collaborate on a ‘media leak strategy.’

So as he prepared to visit Shanksville, he blasted the pair and praised his own lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City when the terrorists struck in 2001.

‘New Strzok-Page texts reveal ‘Media Leak Strategy’,’ he marveled, citing a Fox News Channel report.

‘So terrible, and nothing is being done at DOJ or FBI – but the world is watching, and they get it completely.’

Strzok’s lawyer said a few hours later that ‘media leak strategy’ referred to an effort to stop leaks, not to initiate or promote them.

The White House told reporters that ‘bad weather’ had forced the president to travel to Joint Base Andrews via motorcade instead of helicopter, denying the press the chance to ask him questions on the South Lawn.

White House aides participated in a moment of silence on the South Lawn later in the morning, in fair weather.

Margie Miller was among the 9/11 victims’ relatives, survivors, rescuers and others who gathered on a misty Tuesday morning at the memorial plaza where the World Trade Centre’s twin towers once stood.

She came to the site from her home in suburban Baldwin, as she does 10 or so times a year, to remember her husband, Joel Miller. Only a few fragments of his remains were recovered.

‘To me, he is here. This is my holy place,’ his widow said before the ceremony began with a moment of silence and tolling bells at 8.46am, the time when the trade Centre was hit by the first of two terrorist-piloted planes.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence headed to the two other places where hijacked planes crashed on September 11, 2001, in the deadliest terror attack on American soil.

Trump took the occasion of last year’s anniversary to issue a stern warning to extremists that ‘America cannot be intimidated.’

Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks on 9/11 when international terrorism hit home in a way it previously hadn’t for many Americans. September 11 still shapes American policy, politics and everyday experiences in places from airports to office buildings, even if it’s less of a constant presence in the public consciousness after 17 years.

A stark reminder came not long after last year’s anniversary: A truck mowed down people, killing eight, on a bike path within a few blocks of the World Trade Centre on Halloween.

Debra Sinodinos, who lost her firefighter cousin Peter Carroll and works near the Trade Centre, said she tries not to let the recent attacks unnerve her.

‘You have to move on,’ she said as she headed into the anniversary ceremony with her extended family. ‘Otherwise, you’d live in fear.’

This year’s anniversary comes as a heated midterm election cycle kicks into high gear. But there have long been some efforts to separate the solemn anniversary from politics.