Bill Clinton

... that, that came out of the, the complicated formula around family trusts and, and they threw it up once at the, at the top of Question Time and then didn't come back at all.

It, it's very strange, isn't it? The, you know, the golden rule of politics, uh, that people have known at least, uh, since Bill Clinton is it's the economy, stupid.

It is right now-

Yep

It never reached its intended target in Washington, and that's because of the courageous people on board.

And at Ground Zero in New York City, where Vice President Vance is, and all four ex- living pre- living ex-presidents, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and George W. Bush, who was president that day, are.

[bell rings] They have rung that bell six times, marking those plane crashes at the Pentagon and Shanksville, and for the first two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers, and for the moments each of those towers collapsed.

And they keep reading all the names of all the people killed on 9/11, nearly 3,000.

...

National Guard and that, and Bill Clinton was there, and he came without any security.

He came without cameras, none of that, and he was consoling the victims because that's where people went to identify remains, and it was one of the most heart-wrenching experiences of my life, watching that take place.

Of course it was.

[laughs]

Straight ahead on CNN This Morning, the 9/11 Commission found that terrorism was not the overriding national security concern under President Clinton or pre-9/11 George W. Bush.

So is America repeating the same mistakes when it comes to security? I'm gonna ask Congressman Bennie Thompson that question next.

And stay with us because we are going to be remembering the day that changed America.

A massive show of force in New York today as the NYPD prepares for the day of mourning honoring 25 years since September 11th

11thOur deployment this year at the World Trade Center for 9/11 will be larger than it has been in previous years, as will be our deployment this year for the high holy days at, um, shuls and yeshivas and Jewish cultural institutions, just based on the realities of the, the world that we live in today.

The four former presidents, Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton, will all be in New York for today's ceremonies.

We're gonna go live to our Lee Waldman in New York this morning.

He instead will be part of a ceremony at the Pentagon.

But Vice President JD Vance is expected to be here, along with former US presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, as well as their former first ladies.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former mayor Rudy Giuliani also expected to attend, so a broad mix of political dignitaries expected to be here, but notably, none of them will be speaking at today's ceremony.

And that is intentional, as the focus is supposed to be on the families and the courageous men and women who lost their lives here 25 years ago.

Family members selected through a lottery will read the names of the nearly 3,000 people who were killed in both the 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

President Trump will not be in attendance.

He instead will be part of the ceremony at the Pentagon, but Vice President JD Vance is expected to be here, along with former US presidents, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, as well as their former first ladies.

So a broad mix of political dignitaries, but the focus, of course, at this ceremony today will be on the families as we honor those who lost their lives here 25 years ago.

The thing was memory holed, and it's a, it's a fascinating story of, of really what, what, what, what we now might call cancel culture.

Is, is, um, now, d- was the, was it that they felt there was some criticism that there was some dramatic embellishment? I know there's one scene that's well-documented, you wrote about it too, which almost implies that Bill Clinton as president between 1992 and 2000 had a perfect chance to take out bin Laden.

He tried to bomb him a couple different times.

That's documented.

So there's a, there's a scene in the movie where, uh, some operatives, some CIA operatives near Kandahar in Afghanistan ha- worked with tribal allies, have bin Laden in their sights in, in 1998.

And they seek the final go-ahead, the green light from, from Washington to say, "Yes, go execute the mission," and they don't get it.

And the, the figure who denies it is, uh, the, the guy who was then the National Security Advisor to, to Bill Clinton, a guy called Sandy Berger, since, uh, deceased.

Mm-hmm.

There's also that one image that was found, I believe it was found on one of the properties of Jeffrey Epstein, I'm guessing the Caribbean compound, where George Bush Jr. has, I think it was found at one of the Epstein properties, but George Bush has the, he's in the Oval Office playing with paper planes and these like block buildings that have collapsed and I think that was Epstein.

I know that there was the Bill Clinton blue dress on Epstein's Island.

The blue dress was actually at the mansion in New York City, right off the entryway.

And those red shoes are very important.

Psychologically charged figurative works.

But then, um, there was like something about the Faustian covenant about the red shoes.

So you see these guys with red shoes, whether it's, uh, What's the guy who was the chief of staff for Clinton? It was, it was in the Pizzagate stuff.

I don't know off the top of my head.

By Tony Blair? Yeah, I think that would be a good example.

Yes, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Lionel Jospin, Matteo Renzi in Italy.

Yes.

And then meanwhile, and I really appreciate this observation, so you've got the Social Democratic Party, which is of the nature, I think, even though Germany remains an industrial powerhouse, it's the nature of the modern economy, even if it has a strong industrial foundation, to have fewer and fewer industrial workers.

Encouraged by Speaker Tip O'Neill, a great Irish American, um, family came from Donegal, um, Ronald Reagan helped persuade Margaret Thatcher to agree to the Anglo-Irish agreement in 1985.

Um, Bill Clinton, when he was candidate for the presidency, played, uh, made commitments to get involved in trying to promote peace in Northern Ireland.

And I remember when I was in Belfast in those final days before the agreement was reached, the word would go around that the White House is on the phone, which meant that the most powerful man in the world was picking up the phone in Washington in his busy day and phoning provincial politicians in Northern Ireland, urging them to, to go the final mile for peace.

And that was a very important contribution to the peace process.

Then you had the peace process here, the ceasefires in 1994, and then the Good Friday Agreement in '98.

And, and the world seemed to be going through this kind of extraordinarily positive phase, and trade was developing, the economies of the world were developing.

You know, Bill Clinton was a kind of a, a, a kind of like a modern J- you know, a, a modern JFK almost, this kind of charismatic president.

And then 9/11, the whole thing changed.