Just hours before New York residents were set to vote in the 2016 presidential primaries, Donald Trump confused America’s greatest modern tragedy with a convenience store chain.
“I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down,” Trump told a crowd in Buffalo, New York, on Monday. “And I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.”
Unfazed by his gaffe, the billionaire former reality-TV star and current Republican presidential front-runner continued without pause to commend those who rushed to the scene of the collapsed World Trade Center, where 2,753 people died as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Manhattan skyscrapers.
Among the casualties of 9/11 were 23 New York City police officers, 37 Port Authority officers, and 343 firefighters. In total, 2,977 people have died due to the 9/11 attacks, including 40 who perished in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, which went down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after terrorists hijacked the plane, and 184 who died when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
Trump also used the speech to extol “New York values” as part of his ongoing spat with rival candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
A native New Yorker and real estate magnate who owns nine major buildings in the city, Trump currently leads the GOP presidential pack by 30 points in the state. Polls close across the state at 9pm ET.
H/T New York Times
