Donald Trump doubled down Monday on his claims that he saw a TV broadcast of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the 9/11 attacks — posting a 14-year-old report to Twitter that loosely referenced the alleged celebrations.
The bombastic billionaire, who has come under fire in recent days for the allegations, tweeted a link to a Washington Post story from Sep. 18, 2001, stating that just hours after the 9/11 attacks, “law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.”
“I want an apology,” Trump tweeted with a link to the 2001 article. “Many people have tweeted that I am right!”
Trump has been ranting for days over claims he had seen TV footage of “thousands of thousands of people … cheering” in the hours after the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Yet no such video exists. And the Washington Post’s own fact-checker has said the paper was never able to confirm the alleged celebrations ever took place.
The Associated Press in 2001 also wrote about “rumors of rooftop celebrations of the attack by Muslims” but in that same report said the rumors were unfounded, according to Politico.
Another New Jersey paper, the Star-Ledger, reported that Paterson cops, responding to calls of people celebrating in the streets there, rushed to South Main St., the heart of the Middle Eastern community.
“When we got there, they were all in prayer,” Paterson Police Chief Lawrence Spagnola said, according to Politico.
Critics have suggested that Trump’s claims are just a bigoted effort to ramp up hatred against Muslims in the days since the Paris terror attacks.
Rival GOP presidential candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie disputed the claims that Muslims in the Garden State had celebrated 9/11.
“I don’t recall that. I don’t,” Christie said Sunday night, according to NJ Advance Media.
“It was a pretty emotional time for me because, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s family involved, there were, you know, friends involved and so it was a pretty harrowing time,” he said, referencing the fact that his wife worked in downtown Manhattan on 9/11.
“I do not remember that, and so it’s not something that was part of my recollection,” Christie said. “I think if it had happened, I would remember it, but, you know, there could be things I forget, too.”
Ben Carson, however, agreed with Trump’s claims, saying that he, too, had seen or heard of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks.
“I saw film of it,” Carson told ABC News on Monday.
But the former neurosurgeon later flip-flopped, saying he was thinking of celebrations in the Middle East, not New Jersey.
In recent days, Trump also called for the U.S. to bring back waterboarding, and said the government should create a database for tracking Muslim refugees who enter the country.
“Waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they do to us,” Trump said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
“What they’re doing to us, what they did to James Foley when they chopped off his head, that’s a whole different level and I would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation,” he added.
Also Monday, Trump kept busy, tweeting up a storm — reveling in a GQ interview where he blasted Black Lives Matter and releasing an online ad blasting Hillary Clinton
