A long-forgotten interview with Donald Trump on the first anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks has been aired for the first time on Whakaata Māori. Video / Te Ao
A long-forgotten interview with Donald Trump on the first anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks aired for the first time on Whakaata Māori last night.
The interview, conducted by Te Ao with Moana executive producer Cameron Bennett in 2002, was never aired by TVNZ, the broadcaster for whom Bennett worked at the time.
Despite the 22 years since the interview, it provides a fascinating insight into the man who is running his third campaign for the presidency, and who recent polls suggest retains a chance of winning.
A year after the attacks, Trump described it as “such a weird feeling” not seeing the World Trade Centre from his office atop Trump Tower, where it once took up much of the skyline.
“We thought a building was coming down on top of us,” Trump told Bennett, reciting how firefighters moved him out of the way.
Donald Trump in a 2002 interview with then-TVNZ Sunday reporter Cameron Bennett. Photo: Te Ao Māori News / TVNZ
“A piece of it came down, but fortunately it was able to stay up.”
Years later, after Trump had won the presidency, NBC News would go on to dispute Trump’s claims, reporting that not only was he not near a building at risk of collapse but that he had lied about contributing to a fund for victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.
He would then go on to claim he saw people gathering “in fairly large numbers” to celebrate the attacks, claims which have been largely disproven and are widely considered incorrect.
They were just some of the 30,473 false or misleading claims independent fact-checkers say he uttered publicly during his four-year term in office - a term he tried to extend by inciting the January 6 insurrection, for which the House of Representatives voted to impeach him.
He said he felt the attacks on New York as, “attacks on the free world”.
“We took the hit for everybody else, and it was a terrible hit.”
Cameron Bennett, executive producer of Te Ao with Moana, interviews Donald Trump for TVNZ’s Sunday in 2002. Photo / Te Ao Māori News / TVNZ
At the time, Trump praised the efforts of Ground Zero workers, who battled gruelling conditions around the clock to search for survivors, bodies and clean up the charred remains of the twin towers in the heart of downtown Manhattan.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, for thousands of workers to get together over a 24-hour period and clean up this huge heap of stuff, strewn sadly with bodies. And they did it in seven months. So it was a miracle, I mean there’s never been anything like it.”
Few events have shaped modern America like the September 11 attacks, and few presidents like Donald Trump.
Even in the early 2000s, Trump insisted his chances of winning the presidency were quite high.
“I think I’d have a very good chance. When I do something, I like to win. When I do something, I like to win, I like to do well and I think I’d have a very good chance,” he was quoted as saying at the time.
