Donald Trump Says Osama Bin Laden Had Just “One Hit.” What?!?!

With the 20th anniversary of 9/11 around the corner, the former president downplays the world’s most notorious terrorist.

Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 2017

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

As we near the 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks—which spurred two wars, including the one in Afghanistan that is currently causing so much pain and trauma for Americans and their Afghan allies—former President Donald Trump took the opportunity to downplay the significance of Osama bin Laden’s role in terrorism. On Thursday, Trump made the bizarre claim in several interviews with conservative radio and TV hosts that late al-Qaeda leader—killed during a 2011 raid on his Pakistan hideout by Navy SEALs—was basically a B-lister as far as terrorists go. 

The claim is odd coming from Trump, a native New Yorker, who claimed to have witnessed the attacks firsthand and sought from the very first moments of the tragedy to insert himself in the media narrative. In classic Trump form, he gave a live television interview the morning of the attacks claiming that his 40 Wall Street office building was then the tallest building in Manhattan after the World Trade Center collapsed (it was not). The idea that Bin Laden, who directed the 9/11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 Americans, is not a big deal is simply an anathema to…well, everyone really.  

Trump made his statements seemingly in an effort to burnish his own credibility. Calling into conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show on Thursday, Trump complained that his administration’s targeted assassinations of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force Qasem Soleimani were bigger deals than the killing of Osama bin Laden, under president Barack Obama’s administration:

And we took out the founder of ISIS, al-Baghdadi, and then of course Soleimani. Now just so you understand, Soleimani is bigger by many, many times than Osama bin Laden. The founder of ISIS is bigger by many, many times, al-Baghdadi, than Osama bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden had one hit, and it was a bad one, in New York City, the World Trade Center. But these other two guys were monsters. They were monsters.

Besides being offensive, Trump’s second claim that Bin Laden had only “one hit” is also not true—among other deadly plots, he masterminded attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the deadly attack on the USS Cole warship that killed 17 US sailors in 2000. 

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate