CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins has cornered MAGA Senator Ted Cruz on Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping Sept. 11, 2001 terror-attack lie.
Trump, 80, wove new detail into his telling of events as he spoke at a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks on Tuesday. He repeated his claim that he was at or near the site–and that firefighters saved him.
He added more dramatic color to the rescue story, which he told on the campaign trail in 2016 and to Newsmax in 2021, saying that first responders physically lifted him out.
In Collins’s interview with Cruz, who is pitching to be atop the GOP ticket in 2028, the host pointed out that the president was “trying to make it sound like he was pulled out of the rubble.”
The longtime Trump nemesis then straight up asked Cruz if he thinks that is “appropriate.”
“September 11th was 25 years ago,” Cruz answered.
“It was a horrific moment for our entire country, and you could doubt whatever you want about Donald Trump. But the man is a New Yorker. He loves New York, and I have every doubt that what he‘s conveying there is what he experienced. And that was a traumatic experience for all of us,” he continued.
It is uncertain if Cruz wanted to say he has “no doubt” about Trump’s story while speaking in his defense, rather than “every doubt”.
Collins pressed. “Yeah. Some people might just hear that and think he‘s exaggerating his role. Should anyone exaggerate what happened on 9/11?”
“Look, I think when you’re sharing your feelings, your sentiments,” Cruz said, before segueing on to his own personal experiences, “I remember I was in D.C. on 9/11. We lived less than a mile away from the Pentagon.”
He explained how his wife, Heidi, was evacuated from the White House and walked home with no shoes on.
Trump raised eyebrows when he launched into a rambling story about being rescued by firefighters from a building just yards from the Twin Towers. “The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down,” he began.
“We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen—big, strong guys, and I’m not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here!’ And they literally lifted me up,” he continued, speaking on stage near a display of structural steel that had fallen from the towers that day.
“This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself’ – but they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down.”
The president did not say when the alleged incident occurred.
Just a couple of hours before the interview aired, Trump attacked Collins in a Truth Social post. “Very dumb and unhappy Fake News CNN ‘reporter,’ Kaitlan Collins (really low ratings, also!), had a panel where discussions were all FICTION AND LIES. You would think that CNN, which is suffering terribly in the TV Ratings, would get rid of their 3rd rate ‘anchors,’ and try to bring credibility back to their once storied network. It is fading FAST!” Trump wrote.
It is not clear which panel he was referring to, but her last appearance at that point was on The Source on Monday night. The topic of discussion was the Trump administration struggling to address Americans’ affordability concerns.
Trump’s post is yet another attack against Collins, whom he has said should “smile” more. “She never smiles. I said, ‘Kaitlan, do you ever smile? Smile!’ You have a nice position; you’re at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan! Just smile,” Trump said at July’s White House Correspondents Association dinner.
The president has also publicly lashed out at her during press briefings in the Oval Office. Collins, though, has never bitten.
“I just think in those moments, it‘s important to put the reminder back on the work, and the question and the non-answers we get,” she told Jon Stewart in July. “It’s not really about me, and I don’t want it to be about my reaction. I think if you let it become about that, then it becomes a back-and-forth between the two of us.”
Cruz, meanwhile, is on the podcast and network circuit, pitching to lead the Republican ticket for the 2028 presidential election. “It’s no secret that I want to be president,” he said on Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s podcast last month.
