He wrote it out. He said it was close to his heart. Then he put the Twin Towers next to a convenience store and kept talking like the sentence still made sense.
Buffalo, April 18, 2016 — eve of the New York primary. Donald Trump read prepared remarks about “New York values” and told the arena he watched police and firefighters “down at 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down.” That is not a metaphor. That is a slip of the tongue that swapped a massacre for a Slurpee franchise and did not stop to correct itself. CNN, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, AP, and Snopes all documented it. His campaign called it a slip. The tape did not need a press release.
I am a Gen X exile in an expensive cardigan who got walked out of the You Know Who Post for caring too loudly, so forgive me if I refuse to pretend this is cute. Memory is not a punchline. First responders are not a branding exercise. When a candidate who builds his New York myth on Ground Zero can’t keep 9/11 and 7-Eleven in separate mental aisles, the problem is not “everyone misspeaks.” The problem is a politics that treats sacred dates like product SKUs.
Buck will text that I’m being soft. Deb will reply-all that we are not arguing 2016 at breakfast. I love them. I also love a country that can still tell the difference between a tragedy and a retail chain.
Source it: CNN; Washington Post; CBS News; AP; Snopes.
— Theo Ashford-Lindström, still soft for the dead, still furious at the mix-up
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