The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have now become an issue in the 2024 presidential race after former Vice President Mike Pence criticized fellow candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for distrusting the 9/11 Commission’s report on the attacks.
The ado began after Ramaswamy, a prominent conservative entrepreneur, stated in an interview with Blaze TV that he did not believe the government had been entirely truthful in regard to the terror attacks.
“I don’t believe the government has told us the truth,” Ramaswamy said. “What I’ve seen in the last several years is we have to be skeptical of what the government does tell us.”
The remark quickly made its way to Pence, who stated that he was “deeply offended” by Ramaswamy’s commentary.
“I understand he was probably in grade school on 9/11 and I was on Capitol Hill,” Pence said. “I think comments like that, conspiracy theories like that, dishonor the service and sacrifice of our armed forces who fought against our enemies determined to kill us.”
In response, Ramaswamy said in a long post on Twitter that he wasn’t claiming that the attacks were “an inside job” but that the government had purposely covered up links to Saudi Arabia, although no mention of the country was initially made in the interview with Blaze TV.
“@Mike_Pence says today he was ‘deeply offended’ that I don’t trust that the government told us the full truth in the 9/11 Commission Report,” Ramaswamy wrote Tuesday evening. “Well, I find it offensive that our government repeatedly lies to us. Here’s the TRUTH: the FBI quietly declassified documents in 2021 that definitively reveal the government lied to the public about basic facts of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 9/11, until documents were declassified and they changed their story 20 years later.”
Numerous mainstream reports, including those from the New York Times, have detailed investigations into Saudi involvement into 9/11. Former FBI agents have also accused the government of attempting to bury ties between the attacks and the Middle Eastern ally.
However, it wasn’t the FBI that declassified documents in 2021. That would be President Joe Biden.
Ramaswamy also went on to accuse the government of lying about “the origin of COVID-19, knowledge about UAPs, Hunter Biden’s laptop, how our money is actually being spent in Ukraine,” and “the Nashville trans shooter manifesto” before accusing the media of failing to do its investigatory duty.
“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 unlikely claim,” Ramaswamy added. “There’s no such thing as a noble lie. With all due respect to the former VP, the reason the people don’t trust the government is because the government doesn’t trust the people.”
The response was flooded with conspiratorial remarks blaming the government for 9/11 as well as those that claimed Ramaswamy as a candidate was too good to be true for speaking out and thus must be controlled opposition and not a truly independent candidate.
Polling currently suggests that Pence and Ramaswamy, who have both qualified for the first GOP primary debate on Aug. 23, are unlikely to win. Ramaswamy is in third place behind Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) while Pence is in fourth. All trail significantly behind former President Donald Trump.
Ramaswamy’s comments have received praise by many online.
“Vivek accurately points out that yes, the U.S. gov did suppress the truth about how a Saudi intelligence agent helped settle two of the 9/11 hijackers in the U.S., providing cash, housing and other assistance,” journalist Lee Fang wrote.
Yet others focused instead on Ramaswamy’s initial remarks and accused him of pushing the idea that 9/11 had in fact been perpetrated by the government.
“Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy suggests that 9/11 was an inside job by the US government,” journalist Brian Tyler Cohen added.
Whether the topic of 9/11 will become a topic of discussion at the upcoming Republican debate on Aug. 23 remains to be seen.
