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Up until fairly recently, the nation’s major political parties had effectively no tolerance for conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. To swim in such waters was to guarantee exile from the American mainstream. But in contemporary Republican politics, those standards are being tested.
It was just five years ago, for example, when future Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene created an online video that referenced the “so-called” plane that crashed into the Pentagon, adding, “It’s odd, there’s never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon.” The Georgia Republican also “liked” a Facebook comment that said 9/11 was “done by our own” government. “That is all true,” Greene responded in 2018.
This record hasn’t prevented the congresswoman from being heralded by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as one of Congress’ “best members.”
In the GOP’s presidential race, Vivek Ramaswamy hasn’t gone as far as Greene, but he has talked about the terrorist attacks in ways competitive presidential candidates have not.
A few weeks ago, the entrepreneur and first-time candidate told a conservative media outlet that he doesn’t believe the findings of the 9/11 Commission. In reference to the 2001 attacks, the GOP candidate added, “I haven’t seen evidence to the contrary, but do I believe everything the government told us about it? Absolutely not.”
That, evidently, was just the start of a larger story. NBC News reported:
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has come under fire this week for suggesting in a newly published interview that federal agents may have been on planes involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A feature story published Monday in The Atlantic said Ramaswamy began talking about the 2001 attacks after having discussed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in an interview.
According to the report in The Atlantic, which was published online this week, the Republican candidate was commenting on conspiracy theories related to Jan. 6 — he referenced questions about how many “government agents” were on hand for the Capitol riot, for example — when Ramaswamy shifted his focus to 9/11.
“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers. Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero,” he said. "But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.”
The Atlantic’s John Hendrickson found that it was "hard to get a straight answer" from the GOP candidate about whether he was actually confused about who was behind the 9/11 attacks.
“I mean, I would take the truth about 9/11,” Ramaswamy said, suggesting he did not already have the necessary facts. “I am not questioning what we—this is not something I’m staking anything out on. But I want the truth about 9/11.”
The report caused a bit of a stir, leading the Republican presidential hopeful to sit down with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday night, again claiming that there are “lies the government has told about 9/11.” In the same interview, Ramaswamy said the quote that was attributed to him in The Atlantic was “wrong.”
With this in mind, the magazine published online an audio recording of the candidate’s on-the-record comments, which appeared to bolster The Atlantic’s reporting.
For its part, Ramaswamy’s campaign continues to say the candidate was taken out of context. It’s a safe bet we haven’t heard the last of this story.