Vivek Ramaswamy is once again Just Asking Questions about what happened on 9/11.
In an interview with the Atlantic, the GOP presidential candidate spontaneously turned to the subject during an exchange about whether Americans know the “truth about what really happened” during the January 6 assault on the Capitol.
“I don’t know, but we can handle it,” said Ramaswamy. “Whatever it is, we can handle it. Government agents. How many government agents were in the field? Right?”
He then pivoted to September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania — killing close to 3,000 people.
“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers,” he said. “Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right?”
“I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero. But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to,” he continued. “Well, if we’re doing a January 6 commission, absolutely, those should be questions that we should get to the bottom of.”
He later insisted that he didn’t think the two events “belong in the same conversation” and that it’s “ridiculous” to compare them — but continued to insist that he wants the “truth” about that day.
“I am not questioning what we — this is not something I’m staking anything out on,” he said. “But I want the truth about 9/11.”
If you want his full explanation, it’s here. An excerpt:
The CIA has consistently denied that it allowed the hijackers to come into the United States as part of a failed recruitment effort. Former White House counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, cited this as a plausible explanation for the CIA’s failure to track the first two hijackers and its abiding refusal to alert the FBI to their presence in the United States.
The government hasn’t done itself any favors since then to build public trust around 9/11 or the U.S. response to it. The Pentagon’s prevarications about celebrity soldier Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan – initially claiming he was shot by enemy forces, but later forced to admit that he was killed by friendly fire – is one undisputed case among many.
These events are important foremost because U.S. government officials continue to lie about other matters of public importance – the origin of Covid-19, knowledge about UAPs, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and so on – with a complicit media that just accepts the prevailing narrative without question. This fuels rampant public distrust.
There is no credible evidence that 9/11 was an ‘inside job,’ but ironically when the government systematically lies about Saudi involvement and the media runs interference, that lends plausibility to an otherwise nonsensical claim.
Actually, what lends plausibility is a GOP presidential candidate asking how many federal agents were on board the planes that went into the World Trade Center.
It’s a semi-clever walk back but it’s ridiculous. Mentioning Hunter Biden’s laptop and COVID-19 and UAPs as examples of the government lying to the public totally gives the game away. He’s a cynical jackass of the highest order feeding into the QAnon conspiracy bullshit while pretending to be a government skeptic who is just asking questions.
The GOP primary is a toxic hellhole.