It was a beautiful, clear Tuesday morning in Manhattan on September 11th, 2001.

At 8:45 a.m., an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more on higher floors.

Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial trading firm that occupied the 101-105th World Trade Center floors lost ALL of its employees working that day.

Howard Lutnick, the company’s CEO survived.

By a stroke of luck, he was scheduled to come in late that morning because he was taking his 5-year-old son to his first day in kindergarten.

The firm had two choices after it lost 658 people, the majority of its New York workforce: Shut down, or keep going in their memory.

They chose to rebuild and now some children of the bankers and financiers who passed have followed their parents into the business.

“Imagine how tight this company was, and then we lost them all,” Chief Executive Officer Howard Lutnick said in an interview.

He described attending funerals for days on end as “pulverizing” and reflected on what has come from the decision to carry on and support the families of victims.

Donald Trump says “Nobody’s Gotten to the Bottom of 9/11” at a Saudi-backed tournament

Former President Donald Trump hosted the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Series at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ on Thursday.

When asked about the families of 9/11 victims who plan to protest the event because of Saudi Arabia’s involvement, the former president told an ESPN reporter, “Nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately.”

With families set to protest the event on Friday, ESPN pressed the 45th president for a response to the controversy.

“Well, nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately, and they should have as to the maniacs that did that horrible thing to our city, to our country, to our world,” Trump said. “So nobody’s really been there.”

Trump Focused on the Positive Side of the Event

The former president tried to focus on the positive outcome of the event saying, “We’re going to celebrate and money’s going to charity. A lot of money is going to charity.”

“There are a lot of really great people that are out here today, and we’re gonna have a lot of fun,” he added.

The attack in Manhattan on September 11th will never be forgotten, killing more than 3,000 people and affecting millions of families.

The terrorist attack changed the world. Millions of families and people around the world were traumatized. Even worse, the terrorist attack on 9/11 led to the creation of wars that consequently killed millions more, all while destabilizing an entire region (the Middle East).

On Sept. 8, 2002, just a year after the terrorist attacks on New York City, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN: “We don’t want the smoking gun (of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or WMD) to be a mushroom cloud.”

In the months leading up to the war, former President Bush warned repeatedly that unless the United States invaded Iraq and “disarmed Saddam Hussein,” the Iraqi leader would supply terrorists with chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons to use against the American people.

He cited this allegedly imminent threat as the reason for rejecting international law and unleashing the US war machine against a half-starved, impoverished country that has been under economic blockade for more than a decade.

Is it A Surprise That The U.S. Government Lied?

Even before the conquest of Iraq, the claims made by the U.S. government were widely rejected around the world.

No government in Europe or the Middle East regarded Iraq as a serious military threat.

The UN weapons inspectors had been unable to locate any weapons of mass destruction after months of highly intrusive inspections. Tens of millions of people (the supposed targets of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction) marched in the streets of cities on every continent to denounce the United States’ decision to launch an unprovoked war of aggression.

“Who blew up the World Trade Center?” Trump told Fox News in a 2016 interview.

“It wasn’t the Iraqis — it was Saudi. Take a look at Saudi Arabia. Open the documents,” he said.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who deliberately crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pa., were Saudi nationals — as was Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.

One victim pointed out that even Trump himself had once accused the Saudi Arabian kingdom of being behind the attacks.

The families “simply cannot understand” why Trump would accept money from LIV Golf to host the tournament . Saying his decision caused them “extreme pain, frustration, and anger.”

The Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the attacks.

The 2004 9/11 Commission report detailed that Riyadh “worked closely with top US officials in major initiatives to solve the Bin Laden problem with diplomacy.”

A lawsuit filed on behalf of the families of hundreds of victims in 2017 revealed that the Saudi Arabian government may have funded a “dry run” for the plane hijackings.

“A dry run for the 9/11 attacks”

Two years before the attack, the Saudi Embassy paid for two Saudi nationals living undercover in the US as students, to fly from Phoenix to Washington “in a dry run for the 9/11 attacks,” according to a complaint obtained by The Post.

The filing specifically accused Saudi officials of following “a pattern of both financial and operational support.”

In September of last year, the Biden administration declassified a 2016 FBI report tying two Saudi nationals living in the US at the time to the 9/11 hijackers, with one having diplomatic status.

LIV Golf is backed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Trump’s decision to host LIV Golf faced controversy from the National Press Club over bin Salman’s connection to the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was brutally murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2019, and the US intelligence community has since concluded that the crown prince ordered the execution.

“We call on people of conscience to reject this tournament. Do not attend. Do not watch it on television. Let it fail.”

In a statement to the public, the National Press Club said, “We are revolted by the way the Saudi-funded LIV enterprise has followed the fist bump in the desert by shoving themselves onto golf courses and television screens.”

“We call on all Americans to see this unsavory attempt to minimize the grisly bone-saw attack on Washington Post opinion writer Jamal Khashoggi for what it is: an attempt to sweep under the rug a brutal state-sponsored murder.  We call on people of conscience to reject this tournament. Do not attend. Do not watch it on television. Let it fail.”

ABOUT THE WRITER:

Elena Patestas is a journalist and writer for Valuetainment media. She attended Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and Adelphi University on Long Island, New York. She was born and raised in Roslyn, New York, and currently lives in Miami, Florida.

Elena is passionate about bringing positive change to our world and believes education is the root to solving many societal problems. After overcoming a chronic health condition, Elena became passionate about health and believes food is the key to preventing dis-ease and achieving optimum health.

Amongst her many goals, she hopes to bring positive, impactful change to our world to create a healthy, financially sound, and unified society.