Americans Reflect on 9/11 Legacy 25 Years Later
Left 0%
Center 0%
Right 100%
0 left · 0 center · 3 right
What happened
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 hijackers affiliated with al-Qaeda seized four U.S. commercial airliners. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 struck the World Trade Center towers in New York City, both of which collapsed; American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers intervened. The attacks killed 2,977 people. The United States responded with military operations in Afghanistan beginning in October 2001, a later war in Iraq, and new domestic security institutions including the Department of Homeland Security. The 25th anniversary of the attacks is now being marked.
BLINDSPOT.
Only right-leaning outlets are covering this story
— the other side's media is silent.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage of the twenty-fifth anniversary does not exist; only right-leaning coverage is publishing personal 9/11 reflections. Those pieces report a West Point class that spent its remaining years preparing for war, a 13-year-old in Amman who heard men celebrate as the towers fell, and a New Yorker who joined the search through Ground Zero. Those accounts disagree on what memory now demands—military resolve, a doctrine of supremacy, or a warning about education and City Hall—so a reader of the silent side misses the entire argument over what 9/11 still is.
Right-leaning coverage splits its lead between a Daily Wire essay on cadets bound for combat and another on Muslims who took the attacks as proof they were greater.
What should a country remember about 9/11 when only one side's outlets mark the day?
Bottom line
Daily Wire and the New York Post are the only outlets running 9/11 twenty-fifth anniversary testimonies this week. Miss them and you never hear a congressman call the Afghanistan war worth it or a former Muslim describe cheering as the towers fell.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- First-person anniversary essays describe a West Point class preparing for war, a boy in Amman celebrating the attacks, and a Brooklyn search of Ground Zero
- West Point's class of 2005 graduated with exactly 911 cadets
- Two-thirds of American Middle East studies professors say college students cannot identify who attacked the United States on 9/11
- More than 100,000 people signed a petition asking New York's mayor to stay away from Ground Zero
- Rep. Matt Van Epps says the Afghanistan war was worth it because Osama bin Laden was found and his network destroyed
The Right View
The Daily Wire published two first-person essays. Rep. Matt Van Epps (R-Tenn.), a West Point class of 2005 graduate who served as an Army aviator including with the 160th SOAR, described watching the attacks as a cadet, combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, an RPG strike on his helicopter, and argued the Afghanistan war was worth it because it dismantled al-Qaeda and killed Osama bin Laden; he invoked his class motto Keeping Freedom Alive and called for renewed national resolve. Writer Danny Burmawi said he celebrated the attacks as a 13-year-old in Amman, later left Islam, and argued that supremacism and jihad are core to Islamic doctrine rather than a distortion of it, contrasting that with Christianity and Judaism and promoting Infidel Awareness Month. The New York Post described the towers collapsing as seen from Brooklyn, the brief national unity that followed, and argued that memory has faded; it cited a survey that two-thirds of American Middle East studies professors say students cannot identify who attacked the United States on 9/11, criticized education and local politics, named Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his wife's social media, and noted a petition asking the mayor to stay away from Ground Zero.
Our Take (balanced)
The 9/11 attacks, death toll, perpetrators, crash sites, and subsequent wars and security changes are established historical facts. These pieces are primarily memoir and opinion, not a new documentary investigation. Van Epps's West Point attendance, combat service, and House seat are public-record biographical claims; his judgment that the war was worth it is opinion. Burmawi's childhood account is uncorroborated first-person testimony, and his claims about Islamic doctrine are theological argument, not checkable news facts. The Post's survey figure, curriculum characterizations, and claims about New York City officials are asserted without primary documents in these articles and remain unverified here. No left-leaning outlet has reported this. Watch for official 25th-anniversary commemorations, any released survey methodology or underlying data, and on-the-record responses from named officials.
3 sources
More stories
The week's bottom lines, in your inbox
One email a week: the five stories that mattered and what they actually mean. Free.