‘I Wrote It In A Book’: Trump Repeats False Claim He Predicted 9/11 Attacks

President Donald Trump used an update on the confrontation with Iran to renew pressure on allies to help secure one of the world’s most vital oil routes, before veering into a long-discredited claim that he had predicted the September 11 terror attacks orchestrated by Osama Bin Laden.

Speaking during opening remarks at a Kennedy Center board meeting on Monday, the president repeated his call on countries that benefit from Gulf oil to send warships and naval assets to help the U.S. patrol the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that handles a majority share of global energy shipments.

The passage has been effectively shut since Iranian counterstrikes on neighbouring Gulf states made it too dangerous for vessels to cross safely, intensifying fears over the conflict’s economic fallout and placing fresh scrutiny on Washington’s efforts to rally international backing.

Trump indicated that some allies he’d spoken to had been predictably reluctant to commit forces, using the moment as proof he’d been right in his familiar complaint about the imbalance of U.S. security guarantees.

Eager to portray that he had not been blindsided by the Iranian regime’s weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint he claimed he’d “predicted” that too, before veering into the claim he’d “predicted a lot of things” like 9/11:

You know, I’ve been a big critic of all of the protecting of countries because I know that we’ll protect them and if ever needed, if we ever needed help, they won’t be there for us, I’ve just known that for a long period of time. Just like I knew about the Strait [of Hormuz], that it would be a weapon, which I predicted a long time ago. Predicted all of this stuff. You guys were very generous on all of that.

I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center. I said it the year before he did it, I said you better get him, he’s a bad guy. I watched him being interviewed one time and I said that’s a bad guy you better get him. One year before exactly, I wrote it in a book, you can even check, about a year before the World Trade Center came down. President [Bill] Clinton actually had a shot at him and he didn’t take it, unfortunately. I’m not blaming him for that, but he didn’t take it. And he ended up knocking down the World Trade Center. But I predicted that, too. I predicted a lot of things.

The claim, however, has been repeatedly debunked. CNN fact checker Daniel Dale revisited it, most recently, in October after Trump made the assertion while addressing sailors during celebrations for the US Navy’s 250th birthday.

Dale reported that Trump’s 2000 book, The America We Deserve, released a year before 9/11, did not include the warning the president says it did.

The book mentioned bin Laden only once during a critique of U.S. foreign policy. It did not predict that he would carry out the attacks on New York and Washington.

The mention of bin Laden reads:

Instead of one looming crisis hanging over us, we face a bewildering series of smaller crises, flash points, standoffs, and hot spots. We’re not playing the chess game to end all chess games anymore. We’re playing tournament chess – one master against many rivals. One day we’re all assured that Iraq is under control, the UN inspectors have done their work, everything’s fine, not to worry. The next day the bombing begins. One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.

The book did contain a broader warning that the U.S. faced the prospect of major terrorist attacks, Trump wrote in a separate section:

I really am convinced we’re in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the (1993) bombing of the Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers. No sensible analyst rejects this possibility, and plenty of them, like me, are not wondering if but when it will happen.

But, as Dale noted, Trump did not identify bin Laden as the likely perpetrator and framed the danger as one already widely recognised by analysts at the time.

Watch above via Fox News.

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