No, Donald Trump, No Large Groups of Anyone "Celebrated" in New Jersey After 9/11

Do yourself a favor and check out CNN's Jake Tapper interviewing Donald Trump "adviser" Michael Cohen about Trump lying about, well, shit, everything. Watch and see if you can get through two minutes without wanting to kick Cohen so hard in the balls that he's curled on the floor with the taste of nutblood in his mouth. Truly, in order to work for Trump, you must be the prickiest prick around, and Cohen fits that bill to a T (for...well, you know).

And enjoy the many facial expressions of Jake Tapper, from "Really?" to "The fuck?" to "Really? The fuck?" as Cohen explains that Immortan Trump has the greatest memory in the history of memories and, goddamnit, if Trump says he saw thousands of Muslims celebrating terrorism in Jersey City or Paterson or wherever, he fuckin' well saw it because that memory of his is fuckin' perfect.

Trump and his people have said that they are looking for this elusive footage from the ancient days of 2001, when obviously we were still drawing on cave walls. Except, of course, for all the shit that was already on the internet (or what we also called the "World Wide Web," kids). So the Rude Pundit started perusin' the Archive.org Wayback Machine for the websites of New Jersey newspapers from the week or two after the attacks of September 11, 2001. And guess what he found?

Yup, thousands of people in Jersey City, coming out after the attacks, except they were doing the exact opposite of celebrating the attacks. Here, from the September 15, 2001 Jersey Journal (which covers Hudson County, where Jersey City is):

Is it possible that Trump saw those thousands of people mourning and supporting each other and now remembers it as celebrations? Except that most of them weren't Muslim, so it's not likely.

You wanna know why groups of Muslims didn't gather on rooftops or streets or wherever in New Jersey to praise Allah for the attacks? Because most Muslims were shit-scared after. They were afraid of non-Muslim Americans scapegoating them for what had been done across the river and in DC and Pennsylvania.

The Rude Pundit could not find a single mention of any individual, let alone a mass gathering of people, cheering in joy over the Twin Towers' fall. And he looked at days and days of the Jersey Journal, the Bergen Record, and more, covering Jersey City, Paterson, Newark, and all over the northeastern part of the state. What he found were articles about, say, Pakistani immigrants saddened and upset by the attacks and wanting to help with relief efforts or about the strong relationship between the Christian mayor of Jersey City and the Muslim community, before and after the attacks. Even in an article about a suspected terrorist being held for questioning in Jersey City in the wake of the attacks, a perfect opportunity to talk about how Muslims might not be loyal to the United States, there was nothing.

Finally, though, there is this, from the Newark Star-Ledger on September 18, 2001:

You see that? "Rumors of rooftop celebrations of the attack by Muslims here proved unfounded," the article says, as clearly as can be. And the flip side, that attacks against Muslims were rampant, also was untrue (although there were backlash attacks around the country).

Why does this matter? Because Trump and his flunkies are going around talking about Donald's exquisite memory and how he's right about everything. And he's not. He's a hammy, spittle-flecked demagogue who has gone out on a too-high limb and doesn't know when it's time to crawl back. So let's saw that limb off the tree.