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America Stood Together After 9/11: Can We Return to that Unity?; Trump Defends Promise to Give Every American $5K if GOP Wins. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired September 11, 2026 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[06:00:14]

BRAD SMITH, CNN ANCHOR: That does it for CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS. I'm Brad Smith. CNN THIS MORNING with Audie Cornish starts right now.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: It is 6 a.m. on Friday, September 11th. This is a live look at the 9/11 Memorial in New York, a reflecting pool where one of the Twin Towers once stood.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish, and this is where we begin.

Twenty-five years ago, the nation made a pledge to never forget, to never forget the 2,977 victims who died that day. To never forget the brave firefighters and first responders who ran into the inferno of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And to never forget the innocent passengers and crew on the planes that were hijacked.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, in the grip of sadness and anger, a country vowing to stand united in the wake of this unforgettable terror.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. I can hear you.

Harry. Watch your head.

I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you, and the people -- and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CORNISH: Now, a quarter of a century later, in a country that feels divided, can today's America ever get back to that sense of unity?

Today in the group chat, Noel King, co-host and editorial director of the "Today, Explained" podcast; Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project; and Lulu Garcia-Navarro, CNN contributor and journalist and host of the "New York Times" podcast "The Interview."

Thank you, guys, all for being here on this day.

There has been, even going into this week, division about who should be at the commemoration and what that says about where we are in this country.

How are you thinking about kind of this response on this day?

NOEL KING, CO-HOST/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, "TODAY, EXPLAINED": Well, I don't think we're going to get back to unity anytime soon. I think we have not got the right leadership in this country for unity at this moment, in all honesty.

Like, I look at what our leaders are saying, and it's divisive statement, after divisive statement, after divisive statement. What's interesting is, you know, I think you talk to ordinary Americans, and you hear something different. I think a lot of Americans are tired of divisiveness.

But at this point, 9/11 is just one of those moments --

CORNISH: Yes.

KING: -- in American history that people are using to wrench the divide even further.

CORNISH: Right. Which at the time was so cataclysmic.

KING: Yes.

CORNISH: It had a very jolting effect on people.

I want to play for you Joe Pfeiffer. He was actually the first New York Fire Department chief to respond to the World Trade Center, and he was just speaking on Tuesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE PFEIFFER, FIRST NYPD CHIEF TO RESPOND TO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER: What I saw in New York was this sense of unity that we cared more about each other than any politics.

There's an ordinary hero in each one of us: that we can make a difference, just by small acts of kindness and caring for one another. What we saw in 9/11, what we saw in the -- in the days, and the weeks, and the months after.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Terry, how do we get back to that?

TERRY SCHILLING, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN PRINCIPLES PROJECT: Well, I think for my generation and for the younger generations in America, I think we often associate 9/11 with the wars that follow.

And I think that, if we want to get back to unity, we have to focus on the stories of that day.

Obviously, there were brave men and women that ran into those burning buildings, which is against all human instinct of survival.

But there's this Father Mychal Judge, who was a chaplain for the FDNY. He died while blessing the bodies and while giving last rites to people in those buildings.

I think we focus on the heroes of the day, the people that actually practice love, which is self-sacrifice and suffering for the benefit of other people, like Father Mychal Judge.

[06:05:03]

CORNISH: And I should note, the 9/11 Memorial Museum, they have a new education curriculum they're putting out. Because I was asking them, this is not settled history, so to speak.

We don't talk about the roots of terrorism or anything like that with some sort of consensus. And they said, that's why we're often talking about the people and the literal facts of that day, because everything else is some political jump ball.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. And I think as with everything, when we have these collective traumas, they sort of metastasize in unexpected ways in our psyche, in our collective psyche in America.

SCHILLING: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And I think we've just seen that. You know, 9/11, watching this day always impacts me, not because I was in New York, but because I very quickly ended up in Afghanistan and covering the wars that you mentioned for the following decade.

And I was coming in here this morning and thinking, what could we have done differently? Right? Like, this was such a grievous harm that was done to America. This was such a trauma and -- and an act of despicable sort of aggression.

But what could we have done? What can we -- what lessons could we have learned from that that were different? And I'm not sure that we have really grappled with that in the way that perhaps we should. I don't have any answers, by the way.

CORNISH: Well, I'm going to bring on some folks today who have done some studying of what happened with security after 9/11. We're also going to be hearing from the minority head of the

Department of Homeland Security Committee in the House. So, we've got a couple people today can help us process this.

In the meantime, we're going to bring you to Dallas, give you a sense of what's happening there. Ted Cruz, for example, at this Republican midterm convention, bringing up 9/11 and politicizing it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:11:44]

CORNISH: All right, so there's this window of time on September 11th, 2001, where it felt like you could feel the world change in real time. And it was a terrifying moment then and still may be hard to relive for some.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This just in. You were looking at, obviously, a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center.

(END VIDEO CLIP))

CORNISH: So, this is what we all saw for the first 17 minutes after the first tower was hit, a single distant camera shot. Then speculation and confusion filled the airwaves.

Joining me now is Garrett Graff. He's a journalist and historian and author of "The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11."

Thank you so much for being here.

One of the sort of famous images of that time is of George Bush, the president at the time, who's reading in front of a classroom of very young children, who gets informed of the attacks.

And I just want to show George Bush this week, actually, kind of recounting that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: I knew the first plane hit the tower. Like you, I thought it was an accident.

And the second plane hit -- the second plane has hit a tower, and America is now under attack. I didn't have much time to process that. But it was pretty clear to me that, if we were under attack, then my job was to defend the child that was reading to me and her family and her country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, what followed later was policy that it wasn't clear from what. And by that, I mean, are you in Afghanistan? Are you in -- are you looking for Osama bin Laden? But what happens after that? Can you talk about that idea of defense and how the country hardened

as a result?

GARRETT GRAFF, AUTHOR, "THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY": Yes. You know, I think that this is -- you talk about those first 17 minutes of the day. You know, you're going to hear a lot today. People talk about the attacks began at 8:46 that morning with the first crash into the North Tower.

That's not how America remembers it, that we didn't really realize we were under attack until that second crash at 9:03. You know, President Bush has the same reaction that people do all across the country.

You know, he had talks with White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice about 8:56, 8:57 that morning about that first crash. They have that conversation that he recounts where they sort of say, well, this is weird. Maybe the pilot had a heart attack. Maybe this was a small plane.

CORNISH: Yes.

GRAFF: Maybe there was a navigational error.

CORNISH: Mike Mullin here was saying this week in that same panel, actually, that they thought, obviously, it's just some small commercial aircraft. Maybe it got lost. And then we realized it very much did not get lost.

And I guess what I'm trying to figure out is we reorganized our entire security apparatus as a result.

GRAFF: Yes.

CORNISH: Because we felt we had missed so many data points of information.

GRAFF: Yes. And, you know, this was a moment where America felt, for the first time, this end of this, you know, decades of innocence, that sort of bad things could happen to us from overseas, here at home.

[06:15:03]

And we saw this huge reaction by the U.S. government in the wake thereof.

The morning after 9/11, George Bush sits with his national security. And, you know, this new term, homeland security advisors, which was something that really came into D.C. lingo after 9/11.

And he tells them the next morning in the Roosevelt Room, "Never again." And that becomes the central organizing principle of the U.S. government in what very quickly comes to be known as the global war on terror.

CORNISH: But the agencies that people thought, hey, you didn't connect the dots. You didn't understand what was brewing overseas, the FBI or the CIA. They're not in homeland security.

So, help me understand what was the thinking behind the creation of it.

GRAFF: Yes. And you know, what -- what we saw was this sort of struggle to wrap our minds around how to handle this threat. And in that moment, we saw terrorism really only as an external threat.

You know, we defined terrorism as sort of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden coming from Afghanistan.

CORNISH: And people from somewhere else coming in.

GRAFF: And so, the -- in some ways, the Department of Homeland Security was misnamed right from the start. It was meant to be the Department of Border and Transportation Security.

It was meant to be this force that could draw this wall around all of the ways that people come into our country.

You know, it was supposed to put the Border Patrol, the customs, the aviation security, all under the same umbrella, because the most important thing was to keep the terrorists out of the country in the first place.

CORNISH: The other fascinating thing you've written about is that the idea of conspiracy theories around 9/11 or 9/11 truthers. I thought that was something that brewed online over the following years. Then I go and read your work, and it's days.

GRAFF: It's hours. That -- that very day, a Texas -- Austin, Texas talk radio show host named Alex Jones is on air, saying that these are controlled demolitions, that these are -- that the government of the United States somehow had foreknowledge or was even an active participant in the 9/11 plot.

CORNISH: And the smoke is still in New York then. I mean, to say this, it's understatement, how honestly cruel this is.

GRAFF: And how quickly this all began to form. And of course, all of these conspiracies have been debunked over the years.

CORNISH: And yet, we still hear people be very flip about 9/11. And we do hear that in different corners of the Internet and different political corners of the Internet.

GRAFF: Yes. And I think it is a moment where, in retrospect, we really begin to see the poisoning and the breakdown of our information ecosystem and media ecosystem; that this sort of -- America has always had a strain of conspiracism.

But in the sort of months and years after 9/11, you saw those initial theories turbocharged by the rise and arrival of social media.

A lot of people forget, actually, the No. 1 most popular video on Google Video, the sort of dominant video hosting platform before YouTube comes along, was a documentary called "Loose Change." That was the first viral documentary online. That brings together all of these 9/11 conspiracies, all of these false 9/11 conspiracies, I want to emphasize again.

CORNISH: Yes.

GRAFF: And anyone who goes and watches it now, it's exactly the same template that we saw, you know, in COVID with vaccine misinformation. You know, this sort of cherry picking of evidence and quotes out of context and a lot of sort of "I'm just asking the questions."

CORNISH: Yes, yes.

GRAFF: That becomes the template.

CORNISH: The Internet. Like, as you said, Google comes along, and that's the first thing.

GRAFF: And that's the first thing. And that -- you know, to me, there's this very direct path in our politics, in our media from those 9/11 conspiracies straight through to, you know, "Sandy Hook crisis actors" --

CORNISH: Yes.

GRAFF: -- COVID misinformation, and Stop the Steal. One of the things --

CORNISH: And Alex Jones has only just now really been effectively taken off air.

GRAFF: And that Alex Jones sort of --

CORNISH: Yes.

GRAFF: -- has this 20-year path where he plays exactly the playbook on American politics that he played on 9/11.

CORNISH: All right, Garrett. I know a lot of people want your expertise today. Thank you so much for being with us.

And as we go to break, we're going to remember the victims of the September 11th attacks. There's a drone show over the city recreating the Twin Towers, and it used exactly 2,977 drones, one for each innocent person killed on that day.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:24 :20]

CORNISH: So, the president doubling down on his pledge to give $5,000 to every adult American, but only if Republicans win the midterms.

Just to be clear, it could add over $1 trillion to the deficit. It may not be legal. And FOX News asked the president, why not just send the checks out now? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Because the Democrats can't do it. Because with them, it's negative growth. With -- with us, it's so positive.

So, we're taking in $21 trillion. Nobody -- no country has ever taken in anywhere near that. It's 4 or 5 times higher than the next one. All because of that beautiful word that you and I love more than most others: "tariffs."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, the president has promised checks to voters before and failed to deliver. For instance, remember those dividends from the DOGE cuts you were supposed to get?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not into free stuff. I would prefer him to give $5,000 towards paying down the deficit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And that is a Republican attending his actual convention where he said this stuff. And what she said leads into what we're hearing from the -- the fancy journalist class.

KING: Nice idea from her.

CORNISH: "National Review" headline: "Trump Breaks Glass, Joins Socialists, Embraces Bribery."

KING: Yes.

CORNISH: It's a take. It's a take. That's not "Mother Jones." It's "The National Review."

KING: I think we should all be concerned that he does not make any sense. You know, it's our economy, folks. And we've all got to pay the mortgage and pay rent and pay for gas. And that man doesn't make any sense. And that's deeply concerning. So --

CORNISH: The other thing I hear all the time is don't get fired up, because this isn't really going to happen. Here's Ben Shapiro, conservative commentator.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN SHAPIRO, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: Well, I mean, I don't think it's going to happen. But beyond it not happening, I think that we are now in a political period in which both parties have decided that we are simply going to raise up our national debt as high as humanly possible, and competitively bid out for votes.

So, we can either Medicare for all to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars over time, or, you know, we can promise dividend checks that aren't going to arrive to the tune of trillions of dollars over time. Nobody in government at this point is fiscally responsible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Lulu.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes. I -- listen, the Trump thing, this is desperate, right? This is him absolutely trying to pull things out of the air --

CORNISH: yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- in order to get people to come and vote.

I mean, just last night -- and I'm quoting here -- he said, "You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to Hell." So, now we're, like, invoking fire and brimstone, as well.

CORNISH: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, that's on the Trump side. This has no basis in reality. Also, it's inflationary, by the way.

The other problem: we are suffering a huge moment of inflation. Offering $5,000 to people is an inflationary move. It's what Republicans criticized Democrats for during the pandemic. So, that's the first thing.

And then in terms of, you know, what Democrats are offering, I mean, at least with Medicare for all, what -- and, and yes, the economics of that are questionable.

CORNISH: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But what they're offering there is saying health care is a human right, whereas Trump is saying, Here's $5,000. Please, please, please vote in the Republicans.

They're two different things.

CORNISH: Well, one thing that's interesting is I had just started to hear Republicans saying, the fiscal hawks. They rise like phoenix every 3 to 5 years.

KING: Yes, they do.

CORNISH: And they had just come out of their caves and been like, Did you know the national debt is at 40 trillion?

And as they pop their heads out, Trump just literally steps on it, steps on the moment and goes, have I got a deal for you. It'll just cost you 1.3 trillion.

What's the point of him being out there in this convention if you're going to step on anything -- sort of talking point or thing that your party can say to like, get a -- an edge? SCHILLING: All right. So, the last three generations, both political

parties have agreed on devaluing and debasing the currency.

We have seen the dollar lose over 90 percent of its value over that time. The working class, it's created a K-shaped economy where if you own things, you're doing great.

CORNISH: Yes.

SCHILLING: Your properties and your assets are worth a lot more. And if you're out of that, it's harder and harder for you to attain that.

At the same time, what was incredibly cruel is we were shipping all of our jobs overseas at the same time.

What President Trump, I think, is doing here is he's saying, we've got to start to correct this wrong here. Obviously, there's some politics here.

CORNISH: Wait, wait, wait. That's -- no. No, he doesn't say that. He says, I want to spend a trillion dollars.

SCHILLING: But I think that's the -- I think that's the spirit. We have to start making sure that we -- this K-shaped economy doesn't keep getting worse and worse.

If we don't start -- when you debase the currency, these redistribution programs become almost necessary --

CORNISH: I don't think --

SCHILLING: -- to avoid that getting much worse.

KING: But he's saying everybody would get money, right?

CORNISH: Wait, wait. He just said something intriguing. These redistribution programs.

SCHILLING: That's what they are. That's what they are. And --

CORNISH: But this is why people are also being like, hey, what's the socialist vibe here? Which is giving out money with the policy to give money to stay home with your kids. It's -- all of a sudden, it's give out money and take portions of companies as a staple.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But it's not. But it's not that. It's -- it's give out money for votes. It's not even like do something that actually use -- that is useful.

SCHILLING: I disagree.

CORNISH: Well, then why not work for it now? Why have Johnson send everyone home and not pass your little --

SCHILLING: Because we --

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Give child tax credits, which worked during the pandemic --

SCHILLING: Because we -- no, I agree.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- and cut childhood poverty? Do that. Why give $5,000 and say, Please vote Republican?

SCHILLING: Well, President Trump has expanded the child tax credit, but we also need to increase our majorities in the Senate. We need to show that this is a moving issue for voters. And this is a big midterm, and we're expected to lose. So, if we --

CORNISH: But is saying it as a bribe, OK? Is saying "You won't get it unless you vote for us" OK.

SCHILLING: Well, I think that's realistic, right? If you make this a defining issue in the election, and you win more seats, and you keep the Senate majority --

CORNISH: Yes.

SCHILLING: -- more Democrats are going to say, OK, we've got to start defending further (ph).

CORNISH: If a Democrat -- if Barack Obama got up.