Donald Trump’s critics have claimed that he has ‘lost it’ after he said he warned about Osama bin Laden before he masterminded the 9/11 attacks.
The President was addressing navy officers in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday when he praised the SEALs who stormed Bin Laden’s compound and ‘put a bullet in his head.’
Then, Trump added that he ‘had to take a little credit’ for warning about the Al-Qaeda chief a year before the attack on the World Trade Center.
‘And please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, one year before he blew up the World Trade Center,’ the president continued. ‘And I said, ‘You got to watch Osama bin Laden.’
‘And the fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true.’
Trump was referencing his book The America We Deserve, which he co-wrote with Dave Shiflett and was published in January 2000. It did not make any warning about Bin Laden, only referring to him once in general terms.
Trump also said he had spoken with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth about Bin Laden. Though it is unclear when the conversation may have taken place, as Hegseth was a young man in college when the book was published.
‘But I can tell you there’s a page in there devoted to the fact that I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden and I didn’t like it, and you’ve gotta take care of him. They didn’t do it. A year later, he blew up the World Trade Center,’ Trump told the troops.
‘So, [I] gotta take a little credit because nobody else is going to give it to me. You know the old story: If they don’t give you credit, just take it yourself.’
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment seeking an explanation for Trump’s comments.
The President’s critics erupted online after clips of his speech went viral for the eyebrow-raising claims about Bin Laden.
‘What the f***ing f*** is this maniac talking about. He told Pete Hegseth about Osama bin Laden a year before 9/11??? Pete Hegseth was a 20-year-old college kid a year before 9/11. Trump needs to be removed from office. He’s completely lost it,’ one X user rattled off.
CNN’s resident ‘fact-checker’ Daniel Dale also vigorously pushed back on Trump’s claims.
‘The president claimed his 2000 book warned the authorities they needed to deal with Osama bin Laden. Pure fiction. The book has no Bin Laden warning. Which people have noted since 2015. Because Trump has told the same fake story for ten years,’ Dale wrote on Monday.
‘Does Trump even know what year it is?’ California Governor Gavin Newsom questioned after Trump’s Bin Laden claim quickly went viral.
Still, the President did indeed make a passing reference to the jihadist in his book.
‘One day we’re all assured that Iraq is under control, the UN inspectors have done their work, everything’s fine, not to worry,’ the book states.
‘The next day the bombing begins. One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy number one, and US jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.’
The terrorist mastermind was well known to federal authorities at the time of the attacks.
In fact, he was on the FBI’s most wanted fugitive list for his role in a string of bombings in 1998 that targeted US embassies around the globe.
