Trump’s perception of 9/11 skewed by geography

Donald Trump is standing by his story about what he saw on Sept. 11, 2001.

“And I watched, in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down,” he said.

Trump is referring to the towers of the World Trade Center.

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No media outlet has been able to find any such video of people cheering from Jersey City. But now, we may have an explanation for what he thinks he remembers.

It turns out that just after Sept. 11, reporter Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution decided to follow up on a report regarding five men who worked for a moving company that drove to a waterfront park in New Jersey and were seen taking pictures of themselves clowning around with the towers burning across the river. Passers-by called police who arrested them up on suspicion of being terrorists, and it was reported on the news.

Galloway wrote in his blog Sunday that back in November of 2001 he managed to track down a colleague who worked for the same moving company and who verified that they were all arrested and held for about two months in the FBI roundups after Sept. 11.

Here’s the kicker, though. Galloway traced this guy to the City of Nazareth. He and his friends were undocumented Israelis.

So you can indeed say, as Trump said on ABC, that there “were people cheering.”

But if he’s referring to what happened in Jersey City, there were five of them, and they were Israelis.

Listen to Dave Ross’ commentary here.