In a Fox News debate, Donald Trump attacked Sen. Ted Cruz’s critical reference to “New York values” with a passionate reference to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. As Real Clear Politics reported his remarks:
I’ve had more calls on that statement that Ted made, that New York is a great place, it’s got great people, it’s got loving people, wonderful people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York.
You had two 110-story buildings come crashing down, I saw them come down, thousands of people killed, and the cleanup started the next day, and it was the most horrific cleanup, probably in the history of doing this, and in construction, I was down there. And I’ve never seen anything like it. And the people in New York fought, and fought, and fought, and we saw more death and even the smell of death, nobody understood it, and it was with us for months, the smell. the air.
And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched, and everybody in the world loved New York, and loved New Yorkers, and I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.
Trump once wasn’t so enamored of the World Trade Center or its replacement, the Freedom Tower, describing them in terms that, according to the Independent Journal Review, provoked a backlash from outraged New Yorkers:
In an article from the New York Post dated September 18th, 2001, Trump said of the towers:
“To be blunt, they were not ‘great’ buildings… They only became great upon their demise last Tuesday…”
But Trump’s controversial statements surrounding the World Trade Center towers and the 9/11 attacks were far from over. In 2005, victims of the 9/11 attacks lambasted the billionaire for his insensitive remarks about the proposed “Freedom Tower.”
In regard to the construction of the Freedom Tower, Trump called the building inappropriate, which he suggested was unfit for that part of New York City:
“The Freedom Tower should not be allowed to be built. It’s not appropriate for Lower Manhattan, it’s not appropriate for Manhattan, it’s not appropriate for the United States, it’s not appropriate for freedom.”