While hosting the Saudi-backed LIV Tour at his New Jersey golf club, former President Donald Trump on Thursday defended his decision to get in bed with the controversial golf league by shrugging off outrage from 9/11 victims’ families.
“Nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately,” the former president flatly told ESPN, contradicting his past declarations about Saudi involvement in the terror attacks.
“And they should have, as to the maniacs that did that horrible thing to our city, to the country, to the world,” the man who was president for four years continued. “So nobody’s really been there, but I can tell you that there are a lot of really great people that are out here today, and we’re gonna have a lot of fun, and we’re going to celebrate.”
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The LIV Tour is largely financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The tournament has sparked intense backlash for its alleged “sportswashing” the Saudi regime’s human-rights abuses, assassination of Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi, and its possible involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks.
The fact that this week’s tournament is taking place at Trump’s Bedminster club, just miles away from Ground Zero, has stoked additional outrage aimed at both the ex-president and the participating golfers.
“I couldn't believe that it was actually going to be playing right there practically in my backyard,” Terry Strada, chair of 9/11 Families United, told ABC News on Wednesday.
Trump, however, only sees the tournament as a “great thing” for Saudi Arabia, adding that he’s “known these people for a long time” and they’ve been “friends of mine” for a long time. “They’ve invested in many American companies… and frankly, what they’re doing for golf is so great,” he declared.
Prior to his involvement with LIV—which largely allows him to exact revenge on the PGA Tour for pulling tournaments from his courses following the Jan. 6 insurrection—Trump had no problem regularly invoking 9/11. Whether it was to (falsely) claim he cleared rubble at Ground Zero or baselessly assert he warned about Osama bin Laden before 9/11, the terror attacks were a running theme of his 2016 campaign and early presidency.
In fact, speaking to close pal Sean Hannity in May 2016, Trump said “we have to get to the bottom” of 9/11 while asserting that families of victims should have the right to sue the Saudi government.
“Everybody wants to keep it secret,” he stated. “I don’t—I think most people know pretty much what’s on those papers, but people do have the right to sue and they should have the right to sue. They lost their loved ones.”
After entering the White House, and being the recipient of a lavish reception by the Saudi government during his first foreign trip as president, Trump’s rhetoric towards Saudi Arabia severely softened. He essentially waved away Khashoggi's 2018 murder, for instance, insisting the Saudi government was too important to U.S. interests.
And now, Trump—who has previously said he mourned “hundreds” of friends killed in the attacks—seems rather uninterested in the feelings of those left behind.
“I don’t know much about the 9/11 families, I don’t know what is the relationship to this, and their very strong feelings, and I can understand their feelings,” he recently told the Wall Street Journal about the protests against the tournament. “I can’t really comment on that because I don’t know exactly what they’re saying, and what they’re saying who did what.”
