Politics

How would Trump have responded to 9/11? Let’s hope we never have to find out

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

How would Trump have responded to 9/11? Let’s hope we never have to find out

The “tribute of light” had a test run last Saturday night. Since 2002, the dress rehearsal has been an annual tradition in New York City, coming a few days before the 9/11 anniversary — when enormous 7,000-watt xenon light bulbs are projected 4 miles into the sky near the site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood. It’s always a striking image, capable of giving even the most jaded New Yorkers pause — briefly bringing them back to that time of horror, rage and bewilderment.

I’ll always remember the first 9/11 anniversary — when the tribute of light premiered — because so much of what had happened over that year was unprecedented, terrifying and, in hindsight, completely irrational.

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attack. The Taliban quickly fell in Afghanistanbut the beginning of a 19-year-long war — which they would win — had only just begun. There were anthrax attacks in newsrooms and congressional offices. There were FBI roundups of innocent Muslims. Congress passed the Patriot Act, hyper-charging the surveillance state. The disastrous Iraq War would begin seven months later.

America’s military misadventure in Iraq was such a fiasco that it’s oft-cited as a major factor in Donald Trump’s hijacking of the Republican Party.

America’s military misadventure in Iraq was such a fiasco, in fact, that it’s oft-cited as a major factor in Donald Trump’s hijacking of the Republican Party, which is now more a personality cult than a political organization with coherent politics.

When Trump announced his presidential run in 2015, there were plenty of reasons to be concerned. He was overtly racist. He encouraged violence among his followers. He promised a “Muslim ban.” The thought of what he might do in a national crisis, like 9/11, was terrifying to some of us. But to many others who still wouldn’t vote for him, Trump was all talk, he was a clown, his rhetoric was a sideshow and a distraction to the real issues — like tax cuts or something.

Thankfully, we never had to find out how Trump would have led a frightened, angry country flailing around after a murderous assault on the homeland. We did, however, get a good look at what he’d do as the leader of the free world during a once-in-a-century global crisis — which was to deny the crisis was happening, then lie to the public about the severity of the crisis, then put his nepo baby son-in-law and his cronies in charge of handling the crisis. It didn’t go well, by any metric.

Before that crisis had ended, he tried to steal an election that he decisively lost and directly incited a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. He literally broke the revered American tradition of peaceful transfer of power. Thanks to the cowardice and opportunism of Mitch McConnell, he avoided conviction at his second impeachment, leaving him still eligible to serve in elected office, and nearly four years later — here we are.

Unlike in September 2001, there are smartphones, social media and podcasts with legions of followers readily available to amplify the loudest fearmongering, disinformation-spreading morons. And Trump is not only their hero; he’s their audience.

At Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Trump rattled off a host of fake, inflammatory internet-created stories — the kind spread by those very same highly influential internet morons.

Imagine Trump in his “I am your retribution” second administration. The one in which he’s promised to jail political opponents, journalists, judges and prosecutors. The one in which he’s promised to violently uproot and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. The one in which — thanks to state-level Republican efforts and a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court — he’s got very few remaining guardrails to keep him from executing his authoritarian impulses with impunity.

Imagine Trump in his “I am your retribution” second administration.

There probably wouldn’t be any former generals to talk him out of impulsive bombing campaigns or invoking the Insurrection Act. Even Jared and Ivanka wouldn’t be there to try to talk him out of slaughtering protestors. But he very likely would have supplement-shilling podcasters giving him his intelligence reports, printed straight off of 4chan.

If something like 9/11 happened under a second Trump administration, you wouldn’t need to let your imagination run wild. The aspirational “dictator for a day” has already told us what he plans to do — and the past nine years have made the anti-anti-Trumpers who told us to “take Trump seriously but not literally” look even more inexcusably pliant than they did in 2015.

I don’t think anyone can really argue America handled 9/11 “well,” but if an attack on that scale were to happen again, Trump is probably the worst person imaginable to have all the power in the world.

Anthony L. Fisher

Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and writer for BLN Daily. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

22 hours ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”

Politics

Missouri Supreme Court pauses GOP gerrymander, likely netting Democrats 1 House seat

Published

3 days ago

September 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.

The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.

Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.