Hi all, Brett here. I’m going to take over today’s written recap, and you can watch Ben’s video version above.
Today marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It is a somber day and a reminder of the horrifying terrorist attack on our country that truly changed our world forever.
As New Yorkers, this day always hits especially hard for my brothers and me. I still have vivid memories of September 11, 2001. I was just 11 years old and in middle school when an announcement came over the loudspeaker that planes had hit the towers. Nobody truly knew what it all meant, and the school did its best to keep everyone calm, not revealing the full extent of what had happened just around 50 miles away in Manhattan.
Occasionally, students were called out of their classrooms. We would soon learn that some of their parents had been in the towers when the planes struck. Their lives were changed forever.
Even when I returned home from school that day, I still didn’t understand the full scope of what had happened—until I turned on the television and saw the images that are forever etched in our collective memory. I immediately worried about my own father, who was working in the city that day, though farther uptown. I called him and was relieved to hear that he was safe and out of harm’s way. So many others in my community were not as fortunate.
Today, I want to take a moment to remember all those we lost: the parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, friends, first responders, and countless others whose lives were taken that day.
Now let’s get to today’s news.
Here’s what we’re tracking today:
The 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, marked with ceremonies at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and Shanksville
Trump appearing to fall asleep during the Pentagon ceremony, then using his speech to tie 9/11 to the Iran war
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “judgment day” remarks and his false claim that the U.S. controls the Strait of Hormuz
9/11 family member Terry Strada publicly calling out the U.S. government over Saudi Arabia’s role in the attacks
Mayor Zohran Mamdani shaking Rudy Giuliani’s hand after Giuliani compared him to the hijackers
The Houthis seizing effective control of the entire Yemeni Red Sea coast and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in a matter of hours
A drone strike on Saudi Arabia’s main oil pipeline, and continuing damage to Qatar’s LNG production
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent calling Iran a “cornered and wounded animal” while U.S. bond yields hit multi-decade highs
August inflation coming in hotter than expected, and consumer sentiment cratering
New FOIA records showing Kash Patel obsessing over a Twitter account called Retard Finder
Reporting that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool disaster was caused by the contractor’s own mistakes, per their own admission, not “vandals,” as Trump has repeatedly claimed
Trump’s RNC convention loyalty pledge, his blow-up at ABC’s Rachel Scott, thousands of empty seats, and an attendee calling for a Democratic Senate candidate to be shot
Joe diGenova abruptly resigning from the DOJ’s “grand conspiracy” investigation
Let’s get into it…
Trump Fell Asleep at the Pentagon, Then Woke Up to Sell You a War
Today is the 25th anniversary of September 11th, and Donald Trump’s face went sideways before his speech did. He was at the Pentagon ceremony with Melania, Pete Hegseth, and General Dan Caine, and there are images circulating right now of him appearing to nod off, his head drooping, while the names of the 125 people killed at the Pentagon and the 59 passengers on Flight 77 were being read.
Then he gave his speech, and it turned into an excuse to talk about himself and to justify the catastrophic war in Iran that he started. Reminder: he didn’t attend the 9/11 memorial in NYC reportedly because organizers wouldn’t let him give a speech. That proved to be a good call.
At the DC memorial, Trump said, “We salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never, ever have a nuclear weapon.” Iran had nothing to do with September 11th. You know who did have something to do with it? Saudi Arabia. That’s who was actually connected to this day, and that’s the country Trump has spent his entire political and personal careering buddying up and doing business with.
He kept going: “We will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today. We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory.” No. This was a war of choice. You had a choice not to bomb a girls’ school in Minab, not to blow up a wedding, and not to wreck the global economy with a war nobody asked you to start except Netanyahu. Using a day when nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered to sell your own war is beyond insensitive. It’s demeaning. Plus, selling an illegal war of choice in the Middle East by warning against nonexistent Weapons of Mass Destruction feels a little on the nose on a day like this.
Then Hegseth got up and said, “We control the strait. We will finish this fight.” We don’t control the Strait of Hormuz. And as for the other strait that matters right now, the Bab el-Mandeb, that’s now controlled by Iran’s allies, the Houthis, who just took over more than 3,000 square kilometers of western Yemen in the span of 24 hours. I’ll get to that in a minute because it’s the real story of the day, and maybe the week.
Hegseth also said, “Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11.” And then he closed with this: “The struggle against evil continued, and it continues now. It will continue until Judgment Day.” These people cannot stop connecting a war they chose to start in Iran to religious themes and an attack Iran had nothing to do with.
In NYC, A Mother Confronts the Government Over Saudi Arabia
While Trump was at the Pentagon, the ceremony in New York brought together four living former presidents, their spouses, Vice President Vance, Mayor Mamdani, and Rudy Giuliani, with a musical tribute from Yo-Yo Ma and the reading of nearly 3,000 victims’ names. For the first time, organizers added a seventh moment of silence for the first responders and residents who’ve died in the years since from illnesses tied to the attacks. That toll is real and it’s still climbing, including roughly 6,000 people now, and the FDNY just added 36 more names to its memorial wall.
A moment I found particularly powerful came from Terry Strada, speaking directly to her late husband Tom. She said it’s been 25 years and there’s still no justice for the role Saudi Arabia played in his murder. She said the family won in court, proving the Saudi kingdom fomented a culture of anti-American terrorism and supported the hijackers who carried it out. And then she said this, looking at the people on stage in front of her: for 25 years, administration after administration chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with 9/11 families. They withheld evidence. They broke promises. She told Trump he can still change that, and told him to tell the Saudis to stop lying.
And on a smaller but telling note… Mayor Mamdani, who Giuliani has spent recent weeks trashing, including comparing him to the hijackers themselves and saying he shouldn’t even attend, showed up anyway and shook Giuliani’s hand. Giuliani wasn’t such a tough guy when he came face to face with the NYC mayor. Mamdani also put out his own statement this morning honoring the 2,753 people lost and the New Yorkers who lined up for hours to give blood, who opened their homes to strangers, who carried colleagues down the stairs and went back up for more.
The Biggest Story of the Day/Week
The Houthis just took effective control of one of the most important shipping chokepoints on the planet, one we’ve been warning you about for months at the MeidasTouch Network.
In the past 24 hours, Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces withdrew from Perim Island, which sits at the narrowest point of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. That means the Houthis, who are backed by Iran, now hold every point on the Yemeni side of the strait from the Red Sea coast down to the crossing itself. In under a day they took more than 3,000 square kilometers, including Mocha, Dhubab, Zuqar Island, and Perim. Some parts of that strait are as narrow as 3 kilometers wide.
Combine that with Iran’s continued leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran and its allies now have real influence over something like 30 to 40 percent of the world’s oil supply. Al Jazeera is reporting the Houthis have now swept the entire Yemeni Red Sea coastline. Compare that to what Trump posted a year and a half ago, bragging that the Houthis had been “decimated” by relentless U.S. strikes and would never threaten shipping again. Today’s Guardian headline is the opposite of that: the Houthis just took the port of Mocha as part of a drive for full control of the coast.
On top of that, Saudi Arabia’s main oil pipeline got hit by drones this week, reportedly launched from Iraq, at the same time Saudi oil production has dropped to its lowest level in more than 30 years. Qatar’s LNG production took damage from an earlier Iranian strike that could take three to five years to repair. Europe is heading into winter with gas storage well below where it was last year. Gulf states are now reportedly meeting directly with Iran on Monday to work out their own arrangement for managing the strait, without the U.S. involved at all. That’s the story. The rest of the world is quietly deciding that Washington doesn’t have a central role to play in solving this anymore, because it can’t.
Bessent Calls Iran “Losers”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on right-wing media this week and called Iran “a cornered and wounded animal,” said it’s “the last gasp of the dying regime,” and said the Iranians are “just a bunch of losers” who are “comical” to him. This is the same guy who promised an “economic D-Day” against anyone helping Iran, and then watched China, Russia, and Pakistan all announce they’d keep helping Iran anyway.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, responded directly, saying Bessent has been “gleefully boasting about wanting to impoverish Iranians and collapse our economy,” while instead “he stands powerless and exposed as the world loses belief in the U.S. financial system.” He’s not wrong about the numbers. The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield is sitting at its highest level since 2007. Araghchi also pointed to comments from the acting Navy Secretary, Hung Cao, who told the Epoch Times that Iran “blew the hell out of Bahrain,” referring to damage at the Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters. Araghchi’s response: “We appreciate the candor.”
The Economy Is HOT!!! (If You’re Referring to Inflation)
August inflation came in hotter than expected. CPI rose 3.4 percent year over year, with prices jumping 0.4 percent in the month of August alone, up sharply from July’s 0.1 percent. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, also ran above expectations. Higher gas prices accounted for about a third of the increase, but shelter, restaurant meals, transportation, and vehicle prices all climbed too. Wages grew just 3.1 percent over the same period, meaning inflation has now wiped out whatever wage gains workers had since April.
On top of that, preliminary consumer sentiment for September fell to 47.8, well below the 51 economists expected, while year-ahead inflation expectations jumped to 4.6 percent. Stocks are still hanging near record highs, but as one market analyst pointed out this week, without the AI boom the S&P 500 would likely be 50 percent lower right now, and without the spike in oil prices it would be well above 9,000.
Trump’s Reflecting Pool Lies Get Called Out Again
Remember when Trump kept insisting vandals with knives and box cutters were behind the damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s new blue liner? The Justice Department already quietly dropped the charges against the people it accused of doing that. Now the New York Times is reporting that the contractor itself told the administration the real cause was its own mistakes: a rushed, untested repair plan that mixed two incompatible chemicals and skipped proper application of the adhesive in places. The whole renovation was a no-bid contract designed in part by the general manager of one of Trump’s own golf clubs, rushed to finish before the July 4th anniversary. The government paid that contractor nearly $15 million for the work. Vandals didn’t do this. Trump’s own rushed, favor-driven contracting process did. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro admitted this weeks ago in her dismissal filing (much to Trump’s chagrin). Now, the company has come clean as well.
WTF Was That Convention?!
I already told you about the loyalty pledge Trump made supporters recite in Dallas this week, hands raised, swearing he’s the greatest president in history and promising to “cheat like hell” for him in November, followed by his warning that nonvoters “go to hell.” That happened. Go watch it if you haven’t.
What I want to add is what happened as he was leaving Dallas. He lunged toward ABC’s Rachel Scott on the tarmac, cutting her off mid-question about his $5,000 dividend promise, snapping “not you, not you, not you, you’re the worst.” This isn’t new for him and Scott. Back in May he called one of her questions stupid and called her a “horror show.” Trump didn’t just insult her verbally, he physically stepped toward her while she was still talking.
Meanwhile, NPR is reporting what a lot of us could see with our own eyes: the convention had thousands of empty seats both nights, including almost the entire upper level, even as Trump insisted the arena was “packed.”
And separately, and this should get more attention than it’s gotten: an attendee at that same convention was recorded shouting “he should be shot” three times while Ted Cruz was speaking about Mamdani and Democratic Senate candidates Abdul El-Sayed and James Talarico. Cruz didn’t react to it in the moment. This came shortly after Cruz himself had told the crowd that political hate contributed to the assassination attempts on Trump and the killing of Charlie Kirk last year.
Joe diGenova Is Out
Joe diGenova, the 81-year-old Trump loyalist put in charge of the DOJ’s sprawling “grand conspiracy” investigation into officials who scrutinized Trump going back to 2016, abruptly resigned this week. He hadn’t worked as a prosecutor in decades before taking this job. The investigation has produced dozens of subpoenas and zero criminal charges in a year. Sources say he’d lost the confidence of both the White House and DOJ leadership, accused of slow-rolling and chasing rabbit holes, and reportedly clashed directly with Attorney General Todd Blanche. Asked about it, diGenova pushed back, saying “if you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.” Even by this regime’s standards, that’s a remarkable thing for the guy running the investigation to say on his way out the door. diGenova is as crazy MAGA as it gets. If what they are doing is too unethical for him, then, wow… One can only imagine the corruption happening behind the scenes.
That’s where things stand today. Thanks for reading. Remember to join today as a paid subscriber if you havent’ yet. And if you want the full story of how democracy got here and how we take it back, our new book, WTF America, is available for pre-order right now. See below for the latest deals on the book (one ends today!)
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