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**SEPTEMBER 11, 2020**

Kuttner on TAP

The Attacks of 9/11 and Donald Trump

****

The anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, is a potent
reminder of the costs of a president dwelling in his own invented
reality. Though our current president is an extreme example, this habit
did not begin with Donald Trump.

Those who lived through 2001 may recall the heroic and ultimately futile
efforts of senior counterintelligence officials such as Richard Clarke
to warn the White House that al-Qaeda was planning something big.
Different branches of intelligence agencies and the FBI had information
that odd students from the Middle East were attending U.S. flight
schools, and that people known to be terrorists were entering the United
States. Wiretaps picked up plans for an attack.

Yet the Bush administration did not want to hear it and had no interest
in connecting the dots. Bush's obsession, well before 9/11, was
ousting Saddam Hussein. After 9/11, the attacks gave him a pretext, even
though Saddam had nothing to do with those attacks.

The irony, one of many, is that while Bush's refusal to pay attention
was a leading cause of the attacks-had Al Gore been president, the
warning would very likely have been taken seriously-9/11 literally
rescued the Bush presidency. Before the attacks, Bush was floundering.
Afterward, his popularity soared to 90 percent.

Today, the costs of Trump's magical thinking are even more severe,
from the COVID pandemic, to the impact of worsening global climate
change, to his willful denial of Putin's conniving to help Trump win
election.

There may yet be an October surprise. But for now, unlike 9/11, it is
very hard to imagine a scenario in which COVID or some other deepening
crisis redounds to Trump's advantage.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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