Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has accused President Joe Biden of “plagiarism” after claiming she was in New York City on Sept. 12, 2001.
Biden drew the ire of conservatives on Monday when he claimed during a 9/11 memorial speech in Anchorage, Alaska, that he had witnessed the aftermath of the terrorist attacks and visited Ground Zero the next day. It’s obviously wrong.
“We will never forget… when evil strikes, every precious life is taken too soon,” Biden said. “New York Ground Zero. I remember standing there the next day. Looking at that building Architecture. I felt like I was walking through the gates of hell.”
Lake, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, denounced Biden in a speech shortly afterward. postal To X, formerly Twitter. She also suggested Biden “copied” Trump by sharing a photo of the former president in her post.
Saul Loeb/AFP
“@JoeBiden’s famous ’empathy’ is nothing more than a series of lies, plagiarism and grotesque distortions of his past,” Lake wrote. “Biden was nowhere near New York City the day after September 11, 2001. Do you know who it was?”
In addition to his “Ground Zero” claims, Biden also faced fierce attacks from Republicans for delivering a 9/11 commemoration speech in Alaska, thousands of miles from the site of the attacks.
The speech was delivered at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage as the president was still returning to Washington, D.C., from a trip to Asia for the Group of 20 summit.
Biden defended the site in his speech, arguing that “the distance” of Sept. 11 does not lessen or lessen the “pain” felt across the United States at the time, including in Alaska.
There is no public evidence that Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, visited Ground Zero at any time the day after the attack.
Records do show Biden appearing in Washington on September 12. Biden also recalled on Monday seeing “fires rising in the sky” at the Pentagon after “getting off the Amtrak train on his way to work.”
In response newsweek’s In response to a request for comment, a White House spokesman noted that Biden was at ground zero as a member of the Senate delegation on Sept. 20, 2001, but did not respond to the Sept. 12, 2001, claim.
Lake correctly noted that Trump, a New Yorker who was living in Manhattan at the time, was in the city the day after the attack.
However, there is no evidence that Trump visited Ground Zero on September 12, 2001, and his statements and claims related to the attack have been repeatedly criticized.
One particular comment by the then-future president in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, apparently bragging that one of his properties allegedly became the tallest building in New York after the destruction of the Twin Towers, continues to spark fire 22 years later criticize.
“40 Wall Street is actually the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and actually the tallest building before the World Trade Center,” Trump said during a WWOR-TV broadcast on Sept. 11, 2001. “The Center, it’s Known as the second tallest, now it is the tallest. “
