On November 3, 2020, we will go to the polls to choose between Donald Trump and Joe Biden for the next four years. If we look at both candidates and their reactions to September 11, 2001, the Presidential Race becomes more clear, as if it wasn’t before. Let’s take a look at both men and how they reacted in the days after that horrific event.

8:46 a.m. the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

The day before, on September 10, 2001, Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware) addressed the National Press Club and attacked President George W. Bush’s foreign policy. He discussed weapons systems and anthrax. Donald J. Trump, real estate developer was at home in Trump Tower, wives came and went, but Trump’s triplex at 721 Fifth Avenue was home. Trump is a New Yorker by birth and temperament.

9:02 a.m. the second plane, United flight 175, flew into the South Tower of WTC.

The morning of September 11, Joe Biden took Amtrak into D.C. as usual. He was not permitted to go to the Capitol because by then they believed that Flight 93 might be headed toward either the Capitol or the White House. From the Washington Post:

“Damn it, I want to go in,” Biden recalled telling the officer. Instead, the senator, who then chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was forced to angrily sit on a park bench and make calls on his cellphone.

As a man who has had Presidential aspirations since 1988, you would think there would be pictures of Joe making calls from the park bench. I couldn’t find any. He did find his way to ABC News where he claimed that in that speech on September 10, he warned about this kind of attack:

But in an interview with ABC News just hours after the Twin Towers fell, Biden, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he warned that planes could be hijacked and flown into buildings like the White House.

“Literally as recently as yesterday, I spoke to the National Press Club and talked about the fact that it is just as easy to fly from National Airport into the White House as it is to, you know, do the same thing in New York,” Biden said.

He repeated this claim for years, boasting that he “warned about a massive attack on the United States of America from terrorists,” and that he “wasn’t clairvoyant” but “knew what everybody else knew.”

But, Biden was most worried about a missed opportunity for his Presidential aspirations. Back to the Washington Post article:

That night, Biden and his brother, Jimmy, hitched a ride home with Rep. Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.), who was heading to Philadelphia. Unlike most lawmakers, Biden still returned to his home every night in Delaware.

Biden watched on television as congressional leaders — the ones he urged earlier in the day to come together in a visible way and hold their proceedings as scheduled — sang “God Bless America” outside the Capitol.

“I sort of felt bad that I was sitting in Wilmington, watching them sing ‘God Bless America’ on the steps of the Capitol building and promising to be back in session the next day,” Biden wrote in his 2007 book “Promises to Keep.”

9:37 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77 plows into the Pentagon.

Donald Trump called into CNBC upset that Wall Street had been shut down. Given that we didn’t know what we didn’t know, not a choice I would have made. But, that’s who Donald Trump is.

9:59 a.m. the South Tower of the World Trade Center, where my husband had worked, collapses.

Donald Trump gave an interview to NBC News from Ground Zero a couple of days after the Towers collapsed. Here is the video:

Love Trump or hate him, to me, Trump is calm and Presidential in this video. He is a man of action. He took action. If you doubt Trump’s connection to the working man, this video should end that doubt.

10:03 a.m. United Flight 93 crashes into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

One more time, back to the Washington Post article:

But while the terrorists struck just miles from where he lived, Trump has rarely spoken with passion or emotion about Sept. 11, 2001. An exception came during a 2016 Republican primary debate when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) criticized him for “New York values.”

“When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely, than New York,” Trump said. “You had two 110-story buildings come crashing down. I saw them come down. And we saw more death, and even the smell of death, nobody understood it. And it was with us for months, the smell, the air. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan.”

Donald Trump feels things passionately, but like the Scots-German that he is, he doesn’t do emotion. He doesn’t fake it.

10:28 a.m. the North Tower of the WTC collapses.

Both men are pulling their Presidential campaign adds tomorrow. Pointless, but I understand that it would seem crass.

As we remember the attacks on our Nation on September 11, 2001, we should consider the two men who are running to be President for the next four years. Joe Biden sat on a park bench and went home to Delaware. He passed no legislation and did nothing meaningful after September 11, except claim that he had predicted it. Donald Trump went to Ground Zero, supplied workers, and fifteen years later became President. A man of action versus a man who is all talk. The choice is clear.

God Bless the United States as we remember September 11, 2001 and those we lost.

Featured Image: We All Shine On by Marcella/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)