At 4:42 PM yesterday, Air Force One touched down at Joint Base Andrews after the president’s events in Houston earlier in the day. Exactly 13 minutes later, Donald Trump stepped off the plane as reporters shouted questions from behind the rope line. He ignored most of them, but one caught his attention: Why wasn’t he going to New York for 9/11?
“Because I’m going to the Pentagon,” Trump shot back.
When a reporter followed up and asked why he couldn’t do both, Trump gave the same answer. “Because I’m going to the Pentagon.”
But that wasn’t the real reason Donald Trump was refusing to attend an event that honors the memory of those we lost on one of the most solemn days in our nation’s history. On the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack ever carried out on American soil, the president was reportedly turning his back on Ground Zero because the ceremony’s organizers would not let him give a speech. Apparently, for Donald Trump, that was a dealbreaker.
He would rather not attend at all than stand quietly among the families of nearly 3,000 people who never came home that day. He would rather be somewhere else than listen as the names of the dead are read aloud, one by one, at the very place where so many of them took their final breaths. He would rather abandon a ceremony marking 25 years of grief, sacrifice, and courage than spend a few hours in a place where the microphone would not be his. If Donald Trump could not make that day about himself, he did not want to be there at all.
Since 2012, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum has prohibited politicians from delivering remarks during the annual commemoration, a rule designed to keep the ceremony nonpartisan and focused where it belongs. Presidents and politicians are welcome to attend. They can stand with the families, and they can listen as the names of the dead are read. They can bow their heads, pay their respects, and remember alongside the rest of us. What they cannot do is take the microphone and make the day about themselves.
Every president who has attended since that rule took effect has understood it. Every governor, senator, and mayor who has stood at Ground Zero has understood it. The ceremony exists for the families. For the firefighters who knew they might never come back down and climbed those stairs anyway. For the first responders who breathed in the ash and who are still paying for it with their health. For the people who jumped because that was the only choice left. For the children who grew up without a parent because of what happened that morning. That is who September 11 belongs to.
That decision, all by itself, is a direct look into exactly where we are as a country right now. The president of the United States looked at the 25th anniversary of the worst day in modern American history and decided it was not worth his time unless he could stand at a podium and hear his own voice. He did not want to attend unless he could make it about himself.
That is just who Donald Trump is and another reminder of what it is like living under his corrupt rule, where so many of us wake up every morning and hold our breath while we look to see what he has done overnight to damage and embarrass our country on the world stage.
Today was no different. This is how the President of the United States spent his Saturday: he posted that he is six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln. He shared a truly bizarre AI-generated video of “Donald Duck” geese armed with automatic weapons patrolling the shore of Lake Ontario beneath American flags. He accepted the honorary chairmanship of a golf tournament. And he posted a video of a figure meant to represent himself kicking over a sign reading “Welcome to Lake Ontario,” replacing it with “Welcome to Lake America,” and breaking into his signature, awkward YMCA dance while the original sign lay in the grass. That is the Donald Trump presidency. Armed waterfowl, renamed lakes, and a man who believes he is six times greater than the president who held this country together through a civil war and died for it. It has been reduced to a deteriorating man with access to social media.
These were all ridiculous, but buried within them was a post he made late Friday night at 10:48 PM, where he announced that Venezuela had signed what he called “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” with the United States government. The agreement calls for the development of 17 strategic fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels of oil, more than $100 billion in investment, and more than $209 billion in taxes. It will be operated with the “participation of private operators” through a company that, by the scale of these reserves, would become the second-largest corporate holder of oil reserves, behind only Saudi Aramco.
What this announcement actually means, stripped of the propaganda, is that the United States invaded Venezuela and sent our military into a sovereign nation. We removed its president by force. We interfered in the installation of a new government. And now, that government is handing over control of its most valuable natural resource to American interests through a 100-year concession. One hundred years. This is not a trade agreement or foreign aid. It is certainly not nation-building. That is a country that was conquered being stripped of its wealth by the country that conquered it. And the man who ordered the invasion announced the deal on social media at 10:48 at night, sandwiched between dancing videos and videos of armed geese with the same haircut as he does.
This was done in our name, under our flag, with our military. The United States spent decades telling the world that sovereign nations had the right to determine their own futures and control their own resources. Then we used military force, got the oil, and Donald Trump called it a deal.
We are the country the world used to look to for stability, for democracy, and for the defense of sovereignty and the rule of law. Now our own allies are trying to figure out what to do about us, how far Donald Trump is willing to go, and how they can protect themselves from a United States they no longer believe they can trust.
Even some of the people who helped put Donald Trump back in power are becoming increasingly vocal about what they are seeing. Yesterday, Tucker Carlson devoted part of his podcast to something considerably more frightening than the chaos we have already been living through: the possibility that Donald Trump could use nuclear weapons in the war with Iran. Carlson was speaking with Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in protest of that war, when their conversation turned to the possibility of nuclear escalation and reports of nuclear options being discussed inside the Pentagon.
That was when Carlson became remarkably direct about what he believed should happen next: “The second any president actively considers first use of nuclear weapons, that person should be removed from office immediately.” He then asked, “Why isn’t there an attempt to remove him from office, like, immediately?” Carlson went even further, saying that anyone who suggests using nuclear weapons offensively “is dangerous, is a crazy person, is in fact a criminal” who “should not only be removed from any decision-making authority, but probably should go to jail.”
This is Tucker Carlson. The person who spent years defending Trump to one of the largest audiences in conservative media and who helped build the audience that elected him. The man who opposed both impeachment attempts and called them absurd. That man is now publicly arguing that the President of the United States is dangerous enough to be removed from power and potentially sent to prison. In April, Carlson publicly apologized on his podcast, saying he was sorry for ‘misleading people’ and that he and millions like him were ‘the reason this is happening right now.’ In July, he announced he was working to build a new political party, called the United States government “a one-party state posing as a democracy,” described Trump as appearing “uniquely weak,” and said he was functioning “more like a hostage to foreign interests than a leader.”
That is what makes this worth paying attention to. Tucker Carlson doesn’t suddenly deserve our trust, and we certainly should not mistake self-preservation for courage. It matters because Carlson has spent years making a living understanding exactly what Trump’s supporters will tolerate, what they will defend, and what they are ready to hear. He knew when defending Trump was good for his audience and good for his own power. Now he has apparently decided that telling that same audience the president is dangerous, criminal, and should be removed from office is the better bet. That tells us something.
These are not the words of a man who suddenly found his conscience. They are the words of a man who can see the ship taking on water and has decided it is finally time to build himself a lifeboat. But his reasons for leaving do not change what his departure tells us. He knows what’s coming.
I’ve been going out of my way to talk to as many people as I can this week because I wanted to get a feel for where people actually are right now, away from social media, cable news, and polls. Something happened in every single one of those conversations that I did not expect. Every person brought up what is happening in this country on their own. I did not have to steer the conversation there or even have to mention Trump. But what struck me even more than the fact that they brought it up was the way they talked about it.
A couple of them had voted for Trump, but would not have considered themselves loyalists. They knew some of what he was doing was wrong. They knew things were happening that should not be happening. But they kept falling back on the same phrases. “It’s not that big of a deal.” “We survived his first term.” What struck me was that none of it sounded like a defense anymore. These were not people pounding the table or trying to convince me that Trump was right. They sounded tired. Tired of defending him. Tired of explaining him. Tired of having another outrageous thing to account for practically every day. They had not suddenly changed their politics or joined the other side. Something much quieter seemed to be happening. They simply did not want to carry all of it for him anymore.
That is what I keep coming back to. None of the people I talked to this week could name the exact moment something changed. There was no single story or moment that they could point to and say, “That was it.” But I could feel the exhaustion in the way they talked about all of it. Something had crossed a line they might not have even known they had. Instead of getting louder in Trump’s defense, they were getting quieter. They were not joining the resistance. They were not switching sides. They were not suddenly agreeing with us. They were just stepping back. Just refusing to defend one more thing.
What I’ve taken from this week is that our work right now is not about winning arguments, or about converting anyone on the first conversation, or the fifth. It’s about keeping the door open. Because the door is cracked right now, wider than I’ve seen it in a long time, and our job is to make sure it doesn’t close again.
We have to keep having these conversations. Not to prove a point or be right. But because the people who are quietly stepping back from all of this still need somewhere to land. They’re hearing the false narratives every day, and they’re hearing that the economy has never been better while they’re cutting back on groceries. And most of them know, somewhere underneath it all, that just about nothing they are being told is true. They just haven’t said it out loud yet.
We don’t have to change their minds. We have to help them use their own. We ask the real questions. Not “is your life better?” because that is a slogan designed to end the conversation. We ask: how is your life better? What specifically has changed? What are the things that matter to you, your rent, your gas, your groceries, your kids’ schools, your health care, and how are those things right now? Because when people have to answer with specifics instead of slogans, the truth shows up on its own.
And in two weeks, when those families gather at Ground Zero to read the names of the people they lost, they will do it the same way they have done it every year. Without politics or performance. Because that is what real love of country looks like. And maybe that is what I have been seeing in all of those conversations this week. People remembering, in small and imperfect ways, that loyalty to one man is not the same thing as loyalty to this country. They do not have to agree with us about everything. They do not have to admit they were wrong. They do not even have to join our side. They just have to reach the point where they are no longer willing to defend what they know is wrong. And more and more of them are getting there. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the Day: We are down to one pompom each and sitting in strange positions.
Sources used in the writing of this post:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/28/politics/trump-9-11-anniversary-pentagon-ground-zero
https://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/12/us/9-11-politicians-barred
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-venezuela-oil-u-s-majority-control-65-billion-barrels/
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/17/joe-kent-resigns-trump-iran-israel-threat
https://www.notus.org/us-news/tucker-carlson-starting-third-party
‘We should certainly not mistake self-preservation for courage.” As for Tucker Carlson, you hit the nail on the head, Heather! And love those doggies.
Love the pups! I am a tzu girl too! Thank you Heather for sharing yourself with all of us. Your posts always give me perspective and a sense of peace in the midst of the chaos.