Glenn Kessler, the official Fact-Checker for the Washington Post, wrote this.
ANALYSIS
“I remember when we had the attack in Manhattan, we opened the stock exchange the next day. People were shocked.”
— President Trump, remarks at National FFA Organization Convention, Indianapolis, Saturday
“With what happened early today, that horrible, horrible attack in Pittsburgh, I was saying maybe I should cancel both this and that. And then I said to myself, I remembered Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy, he headed up the New York Stock Exchange on September 11th, and the New York Stock Exchange was open the following day. He said — and what they had to do to open it you wouldn’t believe, we won’t even talk to you about it. But he got that exchange open. We can’t make these sick, demented, evil people important.”
— Trump, remarks at a campaign rally in Murphysboro, Ill., Saturday
“Remember the teams, the Yankees, George Steinbrenner. He said we have got to play, even if nobody comes, nobody shows up, we have got to play.”
— Trump, a few minutes later
Memories are fallible, even for presidents. This is why they are supposed to have staffs who help make sure they stick to the facts and, if they get it wrong, make sure that the misstatements are corrected.
President Trump is not an ordinary president, and apparently he does not have a typical staff. So, in an effort to justify holding a campaign rally after 11 people at a synagogue were gunned down in Pittsburgh, the president twice referenced an event that did not happen.
This will be a very short fact check.
The Facts
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, struck at the heart of New York’s financial district, destroying the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Is it possible that the New York Stock Exchange, located just blocks away, quickly reopened the next day?
No.
The NYSE and even the over-the-counter Nasdaq exchange never opened for trading the morning of the attacks and were closed until Sept. 17 — the longest shutdown since 1933. Other stock markets around the world were closed as well. It’s easy to figure this out using Google. There’s even a whole Wikipedia page.
The market plunged 7 percent that day, but the fact that things went smoothly was hailed as an achievement.
Just two years ago, the Wall Street Journal celebrated the reopening on its 15th anniversary with the headline: “9/17/01: Wall Street’s Proudest Day. A Look Back on the Reopening.”
“The reopening had both financial and psychological significance for the country,” the WSJ said. “In fact, it was Wall Street’s proudest day. The 9/11 attacks in New York were just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, and getting the markets to reopen was a round-the-clock effort, even as workers grieved for those who died. The market closure itself was the longest in nearly 70 years, and it was certain that there would be heavy trading and a stock drop when trading resumed.”
While Trump remembered “Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy,” as reopening the exchange, it was actually Dick Grasso, at the time chief executive of the NYSE. Grasso appeared on Fox News just a few weeks ago, on Sept. 11, to recall the reopening. Dick Russell was a senator from Georgia, known as a fierce defender of segregation.
Trump also implied that baseball did not pause for the attacks but started playing games as soon as possible. But the games were canceled that night — and then for the rest of the week. Professional baseball also did not start up again until six days later, on Sept. 17. The whole baseball season was pushed back a week.
We asked the White House for an explanation but did not get a response.
The Pinocchio Test
There are many reasons the president might have wanted to have continued with a campaign rally. But conjuring up a phony story about the stock exchanges and baseball after the Sept. 11 attacks is not a valid one. We can possibly understand one mistake, but not that it was repeated hours later. Is there no one on his staff who will dare tell him that his memory is faulty?
Four Pinocchios
Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than three decades. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him, tweeting at him, or sending him a message on Facebook.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
I can hear his voice in my head … ugh. Give me the shivers.
He is an unadulterated liar. The Liar-in-Chief.
And he’s dangerous.
As Jonathan Chait pointed out at NY Magazine, “Trump’s party is a petri dish for diseased minds.”
The Demented-in-Chief is Trump.
Truth means nothing whatsoever to this man. He and his supporters live in a comic book universe of alternative facts.
This man lacks empathy. He is fixated on “winning “ and not even a mass murder can stand in his way. What scares me even more than his behavior is the millions of people who cheer for him and believe every word he says. They see the fact checking as fake news, because he says so. The only way we can change direction is to VOTE next Tuesday. If only the people in Nazi Germany had that right, how differently world history might have turned out.
A man goes to see his doctor and says
“Doc, it hurts when I do this”
and the doctor says
“Then don’t do that”
A week later, the man returns and says
“Doc, it still hurts”
and the doctor asks
“Are you still doing that?”
The man says “yes”
and the doctor says
“Your’e sick”
The man says
“Ya, that’s why I’m here, what should I do”
and the doctor says
“Your’e crazy, doing the same thing over
and over again, and expecting a change.
Now, stop doing that.
A week later, the man returns and says
“Doc, it still hurts”
and the doctor says
“I can’t fix your crazy, you gotta stop doing that.”
Then the man asks
“How about you, you keep doing the same thing
over and over again, telling me to stop doing that.
What does that make you?”
and the doctor says
” An expert…”
Thanks for the laugh, it’s a bit of a relief from the continuing horror show in this country. Your posting reminded me of the late fast talking comedian, Henny Youngman.
Some of Youngman’s gags:
*Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.
*My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.
*What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.
*When I told my doctor I couldn’t afford an operation, he offered to touch-up my X-rays.
Thanks for a great laugh (s)!
A tsunami of lies, obfuscations, misdirections, half-truths, red herrings, rotting herrings, conspiracy theories and straw men. Now the latest version of the false flag meme is that the decals on the van of the bomber guy were not faded, ergo it’s a fake job, it can’t be true and it’s all a left wing plot. All you can do is shake your head in disbelief that so many Americans are falling for this conspiracy theory garbage from the far right wing nuts. Oh, and for the cherry on top of this insanity sundae, Anne Coulter is recommending that Trump invade Mexico to stop the “illegal” immigrants from crossing the border. She wants a 2nd war against Mexico!
Much of the blame for normalizing this behavior must rest at the steps of the reporters and news readers who report on him and his enablers. One of his favorite tools to spread lies is to preface them with things like “they say…, I heard…, people are saying…” and so on.
A proper, professional response would be something like “who are they?, from whom did you hear?, which people are saying?” and they wouldn’t stop until they got an answer, which would be out of his wazoo or from right wing conservative sources. I don’t let my sons get away with “they say.” Why should the president?
One more thing they could do is leave en masse from press events when they are ignored, belittled or ridiculed. It would be great to see a sparsely populated room filled with toadies to provide an honest visual for a change.
Before the bomber was arrested, Trump echoed the rightwing cabal in the claim that Democrats were sending the bombs as a way to distract from his singular focus on the dangerous “caravan” that was advancing on our borders.
Hours before the bomber was caught, he tweeted derisively about “this bomb stuff,” as if it was a hoax. He heard it from FOX and his other usual sources.
Some of those sources continue to believe that the “bomb stuff” was a hoax. Incredible but true.
Facts in front of their eyes do not persuade them to admit they were wrong and to apologize for their lies.
“The reopening had both financial and psychological significance for the country,”
More precisely,
“The reopening had both financial and psychological significance for the country’s 1%.”
Yeah, let’s get back to making money, getting the economy of the 1% going.
Whatever thoughts pop into Trump’s mind and flow from his mouth like vomit or from his twitching twitter fingers are DT’s reality and everything else that the media reports to correct his lies and faulty memories is labelled fake news by DT.
And then DT’s faulty often flawed reality might shift to something entirely different on the same day.