According to the WashPo, he made remarks to that effect at two different events Saturday—the same day 11 people were killed during a mass shooting.
President Trump is being called out for falsely claiming that the New York Stock Exchange re-opened the day after the September 11,2001, terrorist attacks.
According to the Washington Post, he made comments to that effect at two different events Saturday—the same day 11 people were killed during a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
One was at the annual convention of the Future Farmers of America in Indiana, where the president said, “I remember when we had the attack in Manhattan, we opened the stock exchange the next day. People were shocked.”
And the second was at a rally in Murphysboro, Illinois, where Trump told the crowd: “With what happened early today, that horrible, horrible attack in Pittsburgh, I was saying maybe I should cancel both this and that. And then I said to myself, I remembered Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy, he headed up the New York Stock Exchange on September 11th, and the New York Stock Exchange was open the following day. He said — and what they had to do to open it you wouldn’t believe, we won’t even talk to you about it. But he got that exchange open. We can’t make these sick, demented, evil people important.”
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In addition to misidentifying the name of the exchange chief at the time, Dick Grasso, Trump also seemed to misspeak about the timeline of events.
According to The Atlantic, the exchange actually re-opened on Monday, September 17, six days after tragedy struck when loaded passenger planes were flown into the World Trade Center towers.
In fact, two years ago, on the 15th anniversary of the attack, the Wall Street Journal published a retrospective about trading in the wake of 9/11, writing, “The market closure itself was the longest in nearly 70 years.”
The piece also points out: “The reopening had both financial and psychological significance for the country. In fact, it was Wall Street’s proudest day. The 9/11 attacks in New York were just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, and getting the markets to reopen was a round-the-clock effort, even as workers grieved for those who died.”
