Remembering September 11 25 Years Later: The Heroes and Bravery, and the Moments That Shaped America | Ep. 1396

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111, every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show on this somber anniversary. The 25 year mark since 9-11, 2001. The date America changed forever. And a date that many of us who were around at the time remember all too well. It is seared in our memories and will be forevermore. The closest thing that's happened akin to it would have been Pearl Harbor. And our parents or grandparents' generation had a clear memory of that one and made sure that the rest of us understood what happened on that day that lived in infamy. And those of us who remember 9-11. 9-11-2001 have an obligation to make sure that everyone remembers that date too. Already with the information age upon us, it's too easy to forget. It's too easy to be consumed by other things. It's too easy to be over on TikTok and hearing vignettes about how Bin Laden had a point. And so those of us who believe, no, Bin Laden did not have a point, need to remind people, especially the younger generation, many of whom consume. shows like this one and podcasts and so on, that there was good and evil that day. And we were the good. We were not the evil. This is not to say America's never done wrong on the international front or in its foreign policy, but there is no question that there were terrorists and there were heroes on the day of 9-11. And the Americans who were attacked and fought valiantly for their lives and for others' lives, were the heroes. We were attacked by radical Islamic jihadists who had all sorts of beefs with America. Yes, they were upset about certain foreign policy decisions we had made, of course, and we need to be cognizant of that. But they did loathe the freedoms of the United States and the way we choose to live. Some people will mock that idea now. It's not mockable. It was one of the things they hated about us. And we've learned that. As we've learned more about the terrorist motives, we've learned that. Foreign interventionism is not a great idea. And a lot of people oppose it for this very reason. But that's not what today is about, at least not for me. It's about the Americans who were innocent and who were living the kind of lives you and I are living right now. Getting up in the morning, getting their kids off to school, kissing them goodbye, going into the workplace to try to lead a productive life. A productive life where you feel like you've added something to this world and then go back home to your family at the end if you're lucky. That's all they were doing. They were regular men and women working in those towers and at the Pentagon and on board Flight 93 who didn't consider themselves extraordinary and certainly didn't consider themselves to be soldiers in some sort of a war. And the horror that was unleashed upon them was almost too much. To repeat. Out loud. To actually articulate. But there's something cathartic about doing it. Because in the back of your memory, if you were alive that day, you know you were a witness to a seminal event in American history. And you have it there. Under layer upon layer upon layer. And being reminded of what we all, went through is somewhat cathartic because it's an affirmation that yes, we do have this shared history. Yes, we did learn a few lessons. More than a few. From that horrific event. And we owe it to the men and women who suffered, died, and were heroic on that day to be cognizant of what they went through and how it did change us. Individually and as a country. So we're going to go through some of that today. Beginning with the actual attacks and how they went down. Our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, says Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet and that now they're messing with your credit card. They say your credit card and the security it offers are under attack. And that Senators Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall want to change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate megastores like Walmart and Target at the expense of everyone. They're not everyday Americans. Credit cards can keep your payments secure and provide rewards that families use to help make everyday purchases more affordable. The Electronic Payments Coalition says the Durbin-Marshall mandates would let corporate megastores cut corners on credit card processing, routing transactions over cheaper, untested networks with weaker security and fewer protections. Find out more at GuardYourCard.com and consider telling Congress to guard your card. On September 11th, 2001, I had just moved from New York City, not long before that, to Chicago. And when I had been in New York as a young practicing lawyer, I had been living at 71 Broadway, which was right by the World Trade Center. It's right next to Trinity Church, if you know southern Manhattan. And the World Trade Center was my view. I used to joke with people who would come to visit me that you never had to leave the house in order to say you had seen Manhattan from a different place. I used to joke with people who would come to visit me from my apartment because while it was a small 800-square-foot apartment, it had a great view. And you could see Wall Street, and you could see the World Trade Center, and you could see Trinity Church, and you could see the grave of Alexander Hamilton in Trinity Church Cemetery, all without leaving your house. And you could see the American Stock Exchange, too. New York and American, both. And I used to go over to the Twin Towers all the time. I mean, it was my. Neighborhood Starbucks was in there. So I'd go over, I'd set up shop, and I'd have a cup of coffee, and I'd read the paper on the weekends and settle in, maybe read a book. Barnes & Noble, not Starbucks. There was a Starbucks in the Barnes & Noble, but it was Barnes & Noble that I was going over to the bookstore. And I'll never forget reading the Ken Starr report there under the Clinton presidency. I mean, that's how long ago this was. When I was living there and cover to cover, it was such a riveting. drop of information long before I was in news. I was, you know, as I said, a young lawyer, young litigator, practicing law. And I would go downstairs of 71 Broadway, and my train was right there, the 4-5. I would catch it to Midtown and work as a litigator for Jones Day. That was my life up until just a few months before 9-11. And by the grace of God, I had moved to the Chicago office just prior. And I say that because while I understood, and my license read, that 71 Broadway on the day of 9-11, and I remember I used it because you were allowed to go back into the area. You weren't allowed to go into Southern Manhattan unless you could prove that you lived there. And it was a disaster zone, of course. But my building had been used to stage, not rescues, but it was used to welcome in fleeing citizens, fleeing New Yorkers trying to get away from the debris. And people went into the. This building, which was all concrete and iron. And part of one of the planes that had been used as a bomb landed on the roof of the building. So that's how close we were. And it was very personal. And I do thank God that I wasn't there when this happened for many reasons, not the least of which is the poison air, the poison water, the poisonous substances everywhere that plagued lower Manhattan, for years after the fact, to the full extent of which we're just now learning more about. But there have been thousands, thousands of New Yorkers who have died in the aftermath of the poisoning of Ground Zero and the related areas down in lower Manhattan. So I feel like I was one of the lucky ones to have moved out just before this happened. It's awful what people had to go through. We count the souls that. died in the towers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon that day, but we too often forget to count all the people who died as a result of the cleanup at Ground Zero and the pollution that happened after Ground Zero that infected so many, not to mention the blood and treasure spent on the fields of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what happened. At 6.45 a.m. that morning at Boston's Logan International Airport, Mohammed Atta and four Saudi nationals checked in for Flight 11, bound from Boston to Los Angeles. That was no accident. The two planes that were flown into the World Trade Center were both from Boston, bound for Los Angeles. That was because they wanted the most fuel, the planes that would be full of the most fuel. They wanted to use them as bombs and they knew that they needed fuel to make them ignite and burn them. to earn as much as possible. The third flight, United flight, I'm sorry, American Airlines Flight 77 was out of Dulles, headed cross-country to Los Angeles. And Flight 93 started at Newark Airport in New Jersey, taking off for San Francisco. So they were all transcontinental cross-country flights full of fuel and innocent Americans. Mohammed Atta, as I mentioned, boarded Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles. He was personally selected by bin Laden for the mission. He was the commander. He was said to be nervous in the airport, sweating profusely. The clerk who checked him in later said his forehead was drenched. Three of the men were identified by the computer as potentially suspicious. Their nationality plus their travel movements, plus if they were also sweating, I'm sure it was a tell. Their bags were x-rayed. Nothing suspicious was found. It's amazing. Think about it. Flight 11 had 11 crew members and 81 passengers, including the five hijackers. At 6.50 a.m., five minutes later, United Airlines representative Gail Jawahir was repeating the standard security questions about luggage to two nervous UAE nationals as they struggled to understand her. They were part of a five-man al-Qaeda unit. All with tickets for the L.A.-bound flight 175, United Airlines flight 175. On that flight, there were nine crew, 56 passengers, including the five hijackers. Again, both flights going from Boston to L.A. At 7.30 a.m., this is all happening within 45 minutes, 400 miles away at Washington Dulles, Saudi brothers Nawaf and Salern al-Hazmi ran into the terminal. It was late to catch American Airlines flight 77. They had only one small bag. One set off two metal detectors, so a security guard checked him with a hand wand. Again, it picked up nothing suspicious. On board American Airlines flight 77 were six crew, 58 passengers, including five hijackers. At 8.14 a.m., 15 minutes into flight 11, its journey, the hijack began. They were intentionally beginning these hijackings about 15 minutes into the flight. We'll get to this later, but they had done, we believe, test runs. And they understood that about 15 minutes into the flight was when the cockpit would be unlocked. They knew what they were doing. The hijack began on board flight 11. Atta and the other terrorists sprayed mace into the first-class cabin, claimed they had a bomb, trying to force the passengers to the ground. They had a bomb in the rear of the plane where they would not bother the hijackers. Passenger Daniel Lewin, a former Israeli commando, bravely tried to intervene, but had his throat slit by one of the terrorists, who then forced their way into the cockpit, killed or disabled the two pilots, and Mohammed Atta was at the controls. At 8.19 a.m., at the rear of flight 11, the flight attendant, Betty Ong, used a seat-back airfoil. To call the American Airlines office, and her calm, cool, professional demeanor and the way she handled the worst of circumstances has made her one of the heroes of that day. It would be the first eyewitness account of the terror of 9-11. She called and reported the hijacking, and we have part of that on tape. The cockpit's not answering. Somebody stabbed in business class. And I think there's mace. That we can't breathe? I don't know. I think we're getting hijacked. Is that American 11 trying to call? Buddy, we have some planes. Just stay quiet and you'll be okay. We're returning to the airport. And who's trying to call me here? American 11, are you trying to call? Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any move, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet. So you heard Betty there, and then you heard the voice of Mohammed Atta as well. He tried to pacify the passengers over the cockpit intercom. But he didn't know how to operate it, so only Boston Air Traffic Control actually heard him. The first part of the message was a bit unclear, but then he says, Nobody move. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet. Trying to get compliance so he could do what he had. By the way, I'm reading these details in part from a Daily Mail account of the TikTok of 9-11, which is excellent. The Daily Mail is a great publication. At 8.42 that morning, at Newark Airport in New Jersey, United Airlines Flight 93 would take off, bound for San Francisco. On board, five attendants, 32 passengers, and three Saudi terrorists and their Lebanese leader, Zaid Jarrah. He's in seat 1B, closest to the cockpit. The terrorists were actually a man short on that plane, as one was refused entry in August by a suspicious immigration inspector doing his job. So they were manned down, which would become relevant, of course, as we know, because Flight 93 is famous for what its passengers did by the time that flight was hijacked and in the air. The others had already been used as weapons. And the passengers were aware of that. And the courage of the passengers on board that flight is second to no story in U.S. history. At 8.45 a.m. on United Airlines Flight 175, the seatbelt light went off and the hijackers leapt up, stabbed a flight attendant, and stormed the cockpit, killing the pilots. Meanwhile, Flight 11, the first flight, the one with Mike, was a success. Muhammad Atta was approaching New York at high speed. Again, it had started in Boston. There is one passenger on board the plane who speaks to—actually, I think it's a flight attendant, Amy Sweeney, who says to her manager on the ground, something's wrong. We're in a rapid descent. We are all over the place. The manager asks her to look out the window to find out where they are. She said, I see water. I see buildings. We're flying very, very low. After a pause, she says quietly, oh, my God, we're way too low. They were traveling at over 460 miles per hour. And at that speed, Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, spilling 10,000 gallons of fuel, which exploded in a fireball, causing the building to lean, then right itself, and force the people inside of it. Many of them to think they were going into the river. Eyewitnesses would say it felt like an earthquake, like the building was swaying and was likely to go down, to topple. That's not exactly what happened, as you know. And that moment of Flight 11 crashing into the north tower of World Trade was caught on tape in an extraordinary moment. Where, I mean, now we have a couple of videos of it, but the one is actually really incredibly clear because there was a film crew from the fire department shooting the, they were addressing a gas leak. And the firefighter turned the camera upward and showed us, just happened to show us, that moment of Flight 11. There was a rule at Fox News after 9-11 that we never showed this. Roger didn't want to show the terrorists' work, their proudest moment. And so we were very, very cautious in the early years at Fox, I mean, I joined in 2004, about ever showing the moment of the planes impacting 9-11, impacting the buildings on 9-11. And now, 25 years later, we will show it. Enough time has passed that it doesn't feel as jarring. And wrong as it did then, but only once. Here it is. This is class. And I think there's mace that we can't breathe. I don't know. Oh, f**k. Something, somebody hit the World Trade Center. Oh, f**k. It's the World Trade Center. There's a fire on the upper floors. This just in, you were looking at, obviously, a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning. That a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. We don't know anything more than that. We don't know if it was a commercial aircraft. We have no idea. Those of us watching television that morning didn't know what had happened. Most of us were hearing news anchors. or speculate about it possibly being a prop plane No one could quite digest the information that this could be a commercial airliner. And, of course, that video was not yet public, and no one had it. So we didn't have the advantage of being able to see video of the actual plane hitting. But there was much speculation about this being a prop plane that, you know, like somebody's private plane that just was errant in flight and caused an accident. And there was speculation, you know, I have to say, John Scott of Fox News was one of the ones who got it right from the start. He mentioned that it looked like terrorism. And then as soon as that second plane hit the South Tower, he said, this has to be terrorism. And he said, the name that comes to mind is Osama bin Laden. He had a place in Roger Ailes' heart forevermore. After that, it was just an extraordinary thing to be able to call in the moment while you're on the air. And he was the only one who did it that I recall. Maybe somebody else did, and I'm not giving them credit someplace else. But John Scott, to his credit, had it right from the start. Inside the North Tower, of course, absolute hell had been unleashed. The burning plane fuel. The fires set inside. The instant death, of course, to those on the floors affected. But the heat and the smoke would affect and kill so many more. And some of their stories are just absolutely harrowing. We do have some of them. Some people called. Some people talked as they were suffering from the North Tower and the South Tower. There's an image. That is iconic in its own way from 9-11 called The Falling Man. And The Falling Man was taken by photographer Richard Drew. He published it of a man who looks almost to be gracefully falling from the tower, the North Tower, we believe. And we do believe, per the Associated Press, that while they haven't completely established, who appears in Richard Drew's photograph, they believe it is possibly a man named Jonathan Briley, who was 43 and an audio technician at Windows on the World, which was the restaurant near the top of the North Tower. I went there many times. He was ordained as a deacon at First Baptist Church of Elmsford just a few months prior to 9-11. And he had left his home early on September 11th, kissed his sleeping wife goodbye. And one of the reasons they believe, it might have been him, is because his family members, if you see, there are many pictures of him, of The Falling Man. And you can make out some of his features, skin color, some facial hair potentially, his build. And his family said they believe, his sister said, it does look like him. Truth be told, it did look like him, she said. She no longer looks at the photograph, however. You can understand why. But they also gleaned it might have been him because he, the, or, the, The Falling Man appears to be wearing an orange undershirt underneath his work shirt and Riley frequently wore one beneath the white shirt. The sister said of not just possibly her brother, but of all the so-called jumpers because they were facing such an awful fate inside that tower as it burned that it was truly a question of either dying by fire, heat, smoke inhalation, in a manner of torture, or jumping, and some untold number of them chose jumping. Some fell. The numbers are not known, but the estimates are possibly as many as 200. And those who were on the base of the tower walking around trying to save their lives, trying to save others, have horrific stories of when the bodies came down and the sounds that that would make and the fright to those who died, who were on the ground, at least one person was killed by one of the bodies that came out of the window. That picture has become so well-known and representative of the horror that people faced that day, innocent people who were just trying to do their jobs and go to work. But this man, Riley's sister, said her belief about those who fell or jumped, whichever their fate was, was as follows, quote, I believe that all of those individuals that jumped were caught. Their spirits were caught. I believe that too. And that's a very healthy way of looking at what happened that day. There's, what kind of a loving God wouldn't catch them? I don't, I just, I love the way she put it, and I agree. Richard Drew said that the picture drew complaints when newspapers published it. In his retrospective, which he published, he described readers' anger and editors' reluctance to show it. His own explanation was, quote, I made a photographic record of someone living the last moments of his life, and every time I look at it, I see him alive. Some of those who jumped held hands. One man had a briefcase. And one woman jumped and held her skirt down to maintain her modesty. And that simple act of dignity would be played in the heads of the Navy SEALs and special forces who years later, 10 years later, would be on their way to Abbottabad, Pennsylvania, Pakistan, about to kill the man who unleashed that hell on America, Osama bin Laden. When the show launched, the first year we were audio only, and I did what was easily one of my favorite interviews of my life, which was with Rob O'Neill, Navy SEAL, SEAL Team 6, and the man who shot bin Laden. If you haven't heard this entire interview, I urge you to go back and listen to it. If you just Google Rob O'Neill, Megyn Kelly, 2020 or 2021, it'll come up. If you have a two-hour drive and you just want to listen to the story of Rob O'Neill, it's just well worth your time. But he spoke of that woman. Listen. Before we left, I had one of my guys say, because we accept the death. That's it. We're going to die. He said, don't take this the wrong way because I'm 100% going. Don't worry about that. I'm going. I just need to say it out loud. If we know we're going to die, why are we going? And so we had a conversation and we had a conversation. We said, okay, well, we're not going after bin Laden for the fame or the reward or the bravado. We are going after Osama bin Laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a Tuesday. And 45 minutes later, she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because that was a better alternative than whatever the hell was going on inside a 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit room. That's what we're going to do. And her last gesture of human decency was holding her skirt as she jumped out of a building and murdered herself. She was never supposed to be in the fight. We're supposed to be in the fight. That's why we're going. Amazing. That's the American spirit right there. That guy and the guys with him and the women at the CAA who worked to find bin Laden for that matter. That's what makes me proud to be an American. Those are the ones I remember on an anniversary like this. A 25-year mark, if you will. Back to the timeline. At 8.42 a.m. at Newark Airport, United Airlines Flight 93 took off for San Francisco. On board, five attendants, 32 passengers, three Saudi terrorists, as I said. This would be the flight that would be brought down by the passengers and the passengers in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania and would change history by doing so. To this day, we don't have full confirmation where that flight was bound for. Many believe it was the U.S. Capitol. We would have been changed forever had they hit the U.S. Capitol building and that enormous dome that absolutely defines the D.C. skyline was gone, not to mention the loss of life that that would have entailed. So the North Tower was hit at 8.46 a.m. that morning. At 8.50 that morning on Flight 77, the terrorists used box cutters to get into the cockpit and knives to kill and stab the crew. Their target was the Pentagon. At 8.52 a.m., Flight 175 was heading for New York City from Boston. Peter Hansen, who was traveling with his wife and two-year-old daughter, called his father Lee and told him that the plane was flying erratically. People have been stabbed, he says, and to call United Airlines. Little Christine Lee Hansen, just two years old, and on board that plane. Just not for nothing, but you do have these young Americans with, as I mentioned over on TikTok, talking about how bin Laden had a point, as I said, or Hassan Piker, this leftist podcaster, said America deserved 9-11. You look at Christine Lee Hansen and you tell me that. He's since tried to walk it back. Who would utter such a thing to begin with? Who would utter such a thing, ever? She deserved it, fuck off. At 8.57 a.m., more than 230 firefighters were on their way to the scene, many off-duty. Going straight from their homes. It is the largest rescue in the city's history. The fire chief, Peter Hayden, later recalled, we had a very strong sense that we would lose firefighters and that we were in deep trouble. And indeed, that would be the case. New York City lost 441 first responders that day. 441. The toll was absolutely stunning. More than 12,000 FDNY members. Later diagnosed with a 9-11-related illness. 12,000. The police and firefighters. The reports of the firefighters running up the stairs while people ran down as they evacuated the building, trying to save their own lives. And the faces of these firefighters, old and young amongst them, running up toward the danger. That's what defines America and that day. Good and evil. Heroes and terrorists. As the police chief in New York said this week, let's be really clear who was who. They knew. They knew that they were driving down, racing down, walking up to their likely deaths, and they did it anyway. That's true courage. That's, I was going to say inhuman courage, but it's not. That's the beauty of it. It is human. It is human courage. They knew the dangers better than anybody, better than we did, better than we ever could. And they did it anyway. At 9 a.m., Boston Air Traffic Control listens back to the first transmission from Atta, which had been hard to understand. And they are stunned to hear him say, we have some planes, some planes. So it's plural. It's plural now. Lee Hanson at 9.03 gets another call from his son, Peter, on Flight 175. He says, quote, I think we are going down. I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building. Don't worry, Dad. If it happens, it'll be very fast. Lee hears a woman scream on his son's end of the phone. And then he hears his son, Peter, say, my God, my God. Peter's mother said later, Lee Hanson looks at the television and sees his son's plane disintegrate. The right engine pierces the entire tower and lands five blocks away. Here is that moment when at 9.03 that morning, September 11th, 2001, Flight 175 hit the south tower of the World Trade Center. The South Tower was so badly torn up that it was hit second but would go down. It was hit second but would go down. And the stories are legion of people who were in the South Tower watching what was going on in the North Tower and calling their loved ones saying, don't worry, I'm fine. Don't worry, I'm okay. They were evacuating the South Tower. But people were, and they were alarmed, but they were relieved that it wasn't their tower and they were proceeding to exit the building when this happened, many of them. It was just a devastating incident. And of course, Bin Laden later famously said it worked even better, his plan, than he had expected it would. He was very proud of that fact until Rob O'Neill put a bullet between his eyes. We've all heard those radio ads about owing money to the IRS. They try to scare you and push you into calling out of fear. But Tax Relief Advocates takes a different approach. If you owe the IRS $5,000, $50,000, or even $500,000, TRA has real solutions to fix your tax problems. Don't lose hope. TRA can often reduce or completely eliminate what you owe. 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Press Secretary at the time, Ari Fleischer, was standing in front of the media holding up a sign that read, Don't Say Anything Yet. They didn't want to cause a panic there. They didn't want to upset the children. The president sat for seven minutes as the children read out loud. The president would have plenty to say just a short time after. At 9.20, so 12 minutes after he'd been told, President Bush delivered a hastily written statement as follows. Well, we have it. Let's watch. Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. Terrorism against our nation will not stand. And now if you join me in a moment of silence. May God bless the victims, their families, and America. Thank you very much. Everything changed for George Bush, personally and professionally from that point. He did not run on foreign policy. No one wanted to deal with foreign policy, much in the same way we're feeling these days. But it was foisted upon him, and he became a wartime president in that moment. He was heavily criticized for the seven minutes, but I understand the instinct. You want to be cool. You want to be in command. You want to project calm, which he was very good at, by the way. And then when George Bush found his footing, after those moments, he was pitch perfect. On his messaging around that event. I mean, George Bush standing in the rubble of the fallen towers in the days after with the firefighters still looking for the remains of their friends and comrades and innocent civilians changed the entire country's opinion of him with that moment behind the megaphone. Here it is. Thank you all. Don't get him, George. I want you all to know I can't go any lighter. I want you all to know that America today America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn. This nation stands with the good of God. With the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. incredible absolutely incredible not pre-written for him complete instinct and what a moment you had to hold on to it there were moments after this happened that mattered that really mattered that sort of became the defining images in addition to what we'd seen that morning of the tragedy that was one of them congress singing outside i'll get to that in a moment i'm getting ahead of myself back to the morning in question 9 28 a.m flight 93 all four hijackers stormed the cockpit and air traffic control can hear the sound of a struggle over the radio leroy homer shouts desperately mayday mayday mayday then the radio goes quiet for 35 seconds then another frantic transmission hey get out of here get out of here get out of here this is the cockpit at 9 37 a.m american airlines flight 77 again this was the one going out of dulles carrying 64 people from washington to los angeles crashed into the west side of the pentagon watch we're looking at a live picture from washington and there is smoke pouring out of the pentagon it would appear that there has been another major explosion this one in the nation's capital there is smoke in the air over the pentagon at this point when you were watching at home on television you didn't know what was happening the plane hitting the pentagon never had a picture perfect video the way the world trade center had and so it was a great opportunity to question about whether a bomb had gone off there um there was like a car bomb or there was something else and there was a false report of a car bomb um as memory serves outside of the pentagon so we were confused and then you didn't know is this a copycat is it related because you weren't sure if it was a plane in the initial reporting of what happened at the pentagon and indeed it was a plane um and it had the wife of the solicitor the u.s solicitor general ted olson his wife barbara olson was on board the plane he would speak so eloquently about her in all the years thereafter but it was carrying 64 people and it was bound for los angeles too crashing into the west side of the pentagon and there is in a stunning memorial at the pentagon to this day there 13 minutes later at 9 50 a.m one of the most horrific moments in the history of the pentagon and it was a very horrific moment in the history of the pentagon and it was a very horrific moment in the history of the pentagon and it was a very U.S. history happened, one World Trade Center at the South Tower would collapse. Here's that moment. This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center. You can see the firemen assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents, and you can see the two towers, a huge explosion now, raining debris on all of us. We better get out of the way. The amount of carnage was unspeakable, and everyone watching at home, the news anchors covering it, everyone knew the loss of life would be immense. One of the saving graces on that day was that it could have been worse. It was relatively early in the day. New York sometimes gets a later start, and it could have been worse. The first planes hit early, before the entire crowd had arrived at one and two World Trade Center, but of course the loss of life would be enormous. It was 2,977 killed, more than 6,000. It wasn't injured. And that North Tower, sorry, the South Tower falling first was a surprise, was a stunner. No one had anticipated that, by the way. I mean, when you heard the coverage, when you talked to the firefighters, people were not anticipating the buildings falling. That's why the firefighters were running up. They knew they might get burned to death. But when the towers fell, it was such a foreign idea that they would, you know, that they would implode, that they would fall. That if you watch, for example, NBC, which I watched in part, I was surfing like many people, they didn't know, they didn't say the building collapsed. There was quite a while there before the dust cleared, and you could see that it was no longer there, that we didn't know what happened. And you could hear even the news reporters said, oh, there's a very loud noise, like an explosion. Sounded like an explosion. I remember it fell, and then of course the North Tower would fall. And I, was married to my first husband at the time, or was about to be actually. We got married that month, September 2001. Our wedding was later that month. And he was a doctor in training. He was doing a residency out at Northwestern, and he was in surgery as an anesthesiologist. And I did something I never do, which is I called him in the OR, which, you know, you don't do, but this was so extraordinary. And I remember he was repeating what I was telling him to the surgeons and to the OR. And I said that, and he said, what do you mean? I said, the twin towers are, they've, they're gone. They were attacked. Planes have been flown into them, and the towers are no longer standing. And he was repeating this to a room full of surgeons in the middle of a surgery, and no one could believe it. People thought I had lost my mind because we couldn't believe our eyes. It just, it just, you couldn't believe your eyes. And, you know, you've seen it in the old movie, you know, from Home Alone to so many others, the twin towers were the crown jewel of the Manhattan skyline. It seems like a weird analogy, but in the way that Titanic was the unsinkable ship, the towers just seemed indestructible. They seemed larger than life. They were huge. They were celebratory. They were absolutely a sign of American capitalism and its might and accomplishment, one of the reasons why they were targeted. And it was just an impossible thing to imagine. And yet there it was before our very eyes. Before the second tower would fall at 10.03 that morning, flight 93 would crash into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the heroes on board that flight would become household names. Todd Beamer, among others, decided to fight. Making phone calls back to their loved ones and in Todd's case to a 911 operator, a supervisor named Lisa, and talking about their fears, what was happening, their plans. And it's because of those phone calls that we know what the passengers on board flight 93 did. Todd Beamer spoke to Lisa Jefferson, and she would tell that story, among other times, in an interview with CBS in 2011. Listen here. Side 18. When I took the call over, there was a soft-spoken, calm gentleman on the other end. He told me that there's three people that have taken over the flight. At that point, I asked him his name. He told me Todd Beamer. He was from Cranberry, New Jersey. Did you make a conscious decision not to tell Todd about the World Trade Center? Why? Yes. Because I wanted him to have hope. I wanted him to think that he still had a chance. I didn't want him to feel like it was just totally hopeless, and he definitely didn't have a choice, and he knew he was going to die. I didn't want him to have that feeling. When he wanted to pray, was your sense then that he knew that. Yes, I did. I felt that he knew at that time, because he had said, oh, Jesus, help us. And then he said, Lisa, would you recite the Lord's Prayer with me? And I knew that he knew at that time that. It wasn't much left for him to do. What do you think that this country needs to know about the men and women who were on board Flight 93? They're all heroes in my eyes. They really are. They all pitched together, and they did what they thought was the best thing to do at that time. And I feel that Todd played a great role in that, because when he told the guys, are you ready? I assumed that they were waiting on his cue. Then they responded to him, and he said, okay, let's roll. And would you please help me welcome his wife, Lisa Beamer, here tonight? She called me this early morning. I told her, I said, you have two boys, David and Andrew? She said, yes. Yes, I do. I said, you expecting your third child? She said, yes. He told you all of that? I said, yes, he did. And he wanted me to let you know that he loved you. He loved you and his family very much, and I gave her a message. message and kept my promise. Wow. Todd Beamer was 32 years old. He was leaving for a one-day business trip to San Francisco. He was deeply committed to his family and to his Christian faith. He and his wife, Lisa, as you heard, had two sons. Their daughter, Morgan, was born January 2002. He did try unsuccessfully to reach Lisa, but couldn't, but then connected with an operator, and she passed along his messages. He had asked her to pray the Lord's Prayer with him, and then she heard him turn to the others and say that famous phrase, Are you guys ready? Okay, let's roll. It was Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham. They became four of the best-known names associated with the resistance aboard United Flight 93, brought down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, instead of, we believe, in the U.S. Capitol. Incredible. Incredible. They stormed that cockpit, and while they weren't able to save the plane and those on board, who knows how many lives they did save, because that flight was not going to come down peacefully in a field or anywhere. It was going to be used as a weapon, just as the others were, and they stopped it. It would be another 26 minutes before the second tower came down to World Trade Center, which was the North Tower. Again, this is the one that was hit first, but came down second, and people were trying inside still to get out. People saw the tower. Phone calls were made from the North and the South Tower before the collapses, some of which I'll get to in a minute, but here is the moment that the North Tower went down at 1029 a.m. Just awful, and absolutely unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. The young people who want to revisit Bin Laden's thoughts about 9-11 try to skirt past all these pieces of tape and these stories, because it's too enjoyable to demonize America and blame it for all of this. We have many times on this show, in response to that nonsense, played the 911 call of Kevin Cosgrove. He was 46 years old. He was from West Islip. He was a husband and father of three. His eldest son was 12 that day. He was a VP at Aon Corp., which was on the 105th floor of the South Tower, about one of the worst places you could be. He called 911 to try to get help for himself and his trapped colleagues. He told the operator that my wife, quote, thinks I'm all right. I called, and I said I was leaving the building and that I was fine, and then bang, that's what happened. He told the operator that they were too young to die, and that call is on tape. It is disturbing, and you can hear at the end when the tower goes down. Here it is, Kevin Cosgrove. I'm trying to let them know where you are. Antifire, sir. Smoke, really bad. 105, two power. All right, two power. We'll get to you as soon as we can. No, he's just saying that, but the smoke's really bad, man. It's the building we need. That's all we can do. We can do it. Where are you? What's the hell are you guys up to? We're getting there. We're getting there. Does it feel like you're marrying all those young kids? I understand that, sir. We're on the way. I know you do, but it doesn't seem like it. You've got lots of people up here. I understand. And then you go out in the building, and you hop up on the top. Smoke rises. You can see the roof there. We're on the floor. We're in a window. And then we have to be in green here. Can't see. I don't know. It took God to blow you in from the left. Does anybody else want to try it in here? No. We're young men. We're not ready to die. I called you and said I was leaving the building. I was fine. I am banged. Hello? Hello? We're looking at the financial center. Two dreamers. Two broken windows. Oh, God! oh absolutely awful he told the operator they were too young to die and they were his remains were found he was buried on september 22nd 2001 his obituary stated that he could often be seen shoveling the walks of elderly widows in winter and helping elderly couples carry bulky packages throughout the year that was kevin cosgrove who died an innocent and not because osama bin laden had a point there was melissa doy 32 years old from the bronx she was an only child she lived with her mother and loved to dance she had no children she was a senior manager at iq financial systems she was in the south tower the right wing of flight 175 had ripped into the 83rd floor where doy's office was located she called 9-1-1 at 9 17 a.m this 9-1-1 call would wind up being used during the prosecution of zacharias musawi the only criminal trial to result from the attacks would prove very important here it is it is it are they going to be able to get somebody up here well of course man we're coming up to you well there's no one here yet and the floor is completely engulfed we're on the floor and we can't breathe and it's very very very hot everybody's having trouble breathing some people are worse some people are unconscious everybody's awake so far yes listen listen everybody's awake yes so far and it's very hot there but no fire right i can't see no high very hot no fire for now and no smoke right no smoke right of course there's smoke ma'am ma'am you have to stay calm there is smoke i can't breathe okay you stay calm with me okay i understand i think there is fire because it's very hot okay it's very hot everywhere on the floor okay i know you don't see it and i know but we i'm going to document we're documenting what you say okay and it's very hot i will see no fire but you see smoke right it's very hot i see i don't see any air anymore okay all i see is smoke okay dear i'm so sorry hold on stay calm with me stay calm now listen listen the call is in i'm documenting i'm gonna let them hold on one second please i'm gonna die all right no no no no no no say you're gonna die ma'am ma'am ma'am say your prayers but we're not gonna die we're gonna think positive because you gotta help each other get off the floor now stay calm stay calm stay calm stay calm you're doing a good job ma'am you're doing a good job it's so hot having trouble breathing very hot that's what i'm doing i'll just let you know stay calm stay calm stay calm can you can you i already did that stay on the line with me please yes ma'am i am going to stay behind this one this is take uh they're here are they inside with you yet dear okay stay calm till they get inside where they are Ma'am, stay calm until they get inside. My name is Evelyn what, ma'am? Yes, ma'am. mother a person could ever have melissa's remains were found three years after 9 11 but they were found so in a way her family was fortunate really stretching the use of that word but so many families got nothing they got nothing back of their loved ones and again that 9-1-1 call would prove very important and i have to say like what a shout out to the 9-1-1 operator there and of course on with todd beamer and others because they they didn't know what to do or what to say this is an unprecedented situation and sometimes giving a person directives on what to do in the literal moment like stay calm like you this is what you have to do you have to stay calm because you're going to have to get out and you're going to have to help people is is a soothing bomb like give their mind a purpose give their give them an active thing to focus on other than the horror around them i don't know if they train the 9-1-1 operators to do that you know as opposed to like she knew this person couldn't necessarily stay calm but i think the way she handled like she stayed calm and she you know no you're not going to die you know she talked to her she said things of course she couldn't possibly know but she was trying to keep a peace of mind for poor melissa and she wouldn't have known that these were her last moments but she she would have known it was a possibility and she just showed a lot of character and calm under pressure and and the 9-1-1 operators are also unsung heroes of the day not to mention the you know the electricians the workers all of the the laborers who had to be there to clean up the mess at ground zero more than almost 10 000 people have died from related illnesses after the attacks the as i said 12 000 members diagnosed with a 9-11 related illness in total they're putting it around beyond that 95 9 500 people dying from related illnesses since the attacks but those firefighters the numbers are so high because they were there in ground zero digging out day after day after day i mean 10 of adults today were born after 2001 and they have no memory of this this is only a small number of people that showed a majority of them 18 to 24 today say they first learned about the attacks in class through school work they didn't learn about it from a family member they don't they don't know about it other than as part of u.s history something we're seeking to change with programs like this and by keeping the record keeping the record there were harrowing tales of those who did manage to escape i'm going to tell you two of them one jojo capastro jojo capastro she spoke to the daily mail and she survived 9-11 by descending 87 flights in 21 minutes from the north tower escaping the collapse thank god she's now 64 a photographer captured this image as she fled for her life she is covered in soot it is one of the most famous images from 9-11 with another person next to her she is barely recognizable but she is the tall one on the left who you can kind of tell has blonde hair it looks like it looks like something out of world war ii it it just it looks impossible to have happened on the streets of the united states of america and yet jojo didn't feel well on the morning of september 11th reports the mail but she told herself just get up get coffee get to work by 8 30 a.m she was in her office at a boutique investment banking and brokerage firm the may davis group on the 87th floor of the north tower at 8 46 a.m the first plane hit and again it hit the north tower but jojo and her colleagues didn't know that all they knew was that something catastrophic had occurred some sort of seismic impact we rocked she said the whole building went back and forth one two three four five six times and then we went forward and i thought we were going into the river i looked out the window she said i saw someone in a chair i saw a briefcase i saw a fireball and smoke started to come into the office the race was on to get out for jojo and her colleagues they quickly established that two of the three stairwells on their floor were blocked or melted shut can you imagine while a colleague hacked some sort of a passageway through the rubble jojo and others doused clothing and water to make masks before crawling on all fours out into the dimly lit stairwell quote we were on our hands and knees when tower two hit jojo said the second impact came at 9 03 a.m i have to be very honest with you she said i thought i was going to die i felt something jump inside me and push me to go push me to go the stairs that they had taken only went as far as the 78th floor a transition floor which they had to cross to transfer to another staircase this was a very very common tale of those trying to evacuate i remember the distinct smell of burnt hair and burnt skin there's fire there's chaos there's people screaming there's injured people there's dead people each floor had a different story she said as they went down the now more crowded stairwell one would have music one would have a couple of people in wheelchairs all around the smell of gasoline jet fuel had doused the building on impact i remember on the 65th floor she said there was a man praying and then we went down another floor and this breaks my heart you saw the firemen coming up we were going down on the right and they were coming up on the left and you saw the fear on their faces and i'm like oh my god they're walking right into this it's just absolutely incredible what the first responders did what these guys did knowing the stakes knowing they had families of their own at home and not only once many tales of these firefighters and others like well going up over and over and staying trying to get people down to the elevator bank down to a safer floor and then going back up the smoky stairway to get more people at great risk to themselves by the third floor jojo recalled she began to see light and her instinct as she neared it was to rush out onto the concourse it looked like a war zone i was in total shock then a jumper fell right in front of me through the glass and i fainted when she came to a police officer when she came to a police officer picked her up and carried her again a first responder when i got outside i heard a roar it was the south tower tower coming down and i started running a priest grabbed me a priest came out of nowhere did he though and pulled me under a car and started to pray and all i heard was bang bang bang on top of the car and i was knocked unconscious when she came around everything was white i thought i had died and gone to heaven when she finally reached home that day she took off her clothes and packed them away along with her shoes in a box in the basement she suffered tremendous survivor's guilt and still does to this day i was single i was 39 years old and my friend harry had a two-year-old son and a one-month-old newborn why didn't they take me why was i there i was the chosen one in 2018 when jojo got married she asked phil the photographer who took that photo to be her wedding photographer their friendship close and easy is clear jojo put it simply if you didn't go through it i find people just don't understand and phil understands me because phil was there that day phil saw me at the worst day of my life jojo still works in the markets reports the daily mail she's a wife a stepmother to four sons and a grandmother to 11 she'll be at the memorial on friday this week now today a place where she finds peace and serenity she said i'll go alone i have my 9-11 family down there waiting for me wow what a woman and that is i'm sure how they feel that the other survivors and those who survived someone who was deceased are part of the same family the same special club and while they no longer have their work colleagues their friends their family they have each other they do and they insist that we remember this day and what happened and we honor that today intentionally lauren manning is another survivor of 9-11 she was an executive working in world trade and she was burned when the elevators opened the doors opened and a fireball completely encompassed her she would come on my show at fox news and tell her story it was absolutely unforgettable she was burned over her entire body but she's become a motivational speaker and in the following clip in which she tells what happened to her you will see why lauren manning watch the pain was unimaginable the burns was crushing my hands were so badly burned they were two mitts at the end of my arms i realized that this was my moment and my choice i could keep fighting i could surrender and i decided to live and i knew that my only shot was across six lanes of highway where they recently laid a narrow strip of grass everything else was cement and macadam all i could think of as i began to run across that highway which seemed to last forever was my son absolutely unbelievably inspirational she goes on to make the point when she speaks publicly that you you can stay down when adversity adversity hits you can stay down or you can rise up and you can find the will to live for your family for those who love you for those you love for those you're connected to her son saved her life that day she pulled herself across the highway burned over 90 of her body and insisted that she would live that this would be the beginning not the end and she she's had untold numbers of surgeries the pain is so and yet she finds a way to speak optimistically about life and our reason for being here if she can find that so can we if she can find optimism in the wake of what's happened to her so can we it's a challenge it's a decision it's a choice we can all make it as she did it's a challenge it's a choice we can all make it as she did strapped 60 pounds of gear to his back and he raced on foot through the tunnel. They believe he was in the South Tower when it collapsed. They don't know. His remains have never been recovered, but the remains of other Squad One firefighters were found there. And now in his memory, Frank and his other family members have put together the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and they do a 5K run every year on September 29th. And we've been to it. My entire team on the Kelly File ran the race together. But what you see when you run the Tunnels to Towers race is, it has nothing to do with yourself other than your eyes. You see this, firefighters in full gear running. You see military vets from Iraq and Afghanistan with no legs running on their prosthetics. The entire 5K without complaint. It's absolutely humbling as a human being. I encourage everybody to do it at one point in your life. If you can get to New York for it, you run the exact route and you see what he did. Most of us do it without the 60 pounds of gear on our back and most of us are not running to our certain death like Stephen was. He, it's always the last Sunday in September, not necessarily the 29th. It's still ongoing. The foundation now, if they help firefighters, first responder families who lose their loved one, law enforcement, firefighters, or military, they offer smart homes to injured service members who returned from the wars, missing limbs, sometimes all four of them. And Tunnels to Towers Foundation will build them. And they're going to build them. A smart home so that they can live independently and reclaim their dignity. It's a wonderful cause. I love Frank Siller. I only wish that I had known Stephen. Here is an interview we did back in 2012 on my afternoon show there, America Live, where we interviewed retired Marine Corporal Todd Nicely, who was injured in Afghanistan. Your wife told you when you were recovering at the beginning, honey, do you know what happened? what happened and you said what happened to me and she said do you know you lost your legs you said yes she said do you know you lost both of your hands too you said no and your first response was did anyone else get hurt she said no you said good and that was the end of it pretty much i think for most of us looking at you guys and trying to understand that your first instinct was to ask whether anybody else was hurt when you've just been told that you had lost your your legs and your hands we try to understand how somebody could be that strong do you have an answer well when you're over there you know you're looking out for the guys that are next to you because they're the ones who are taking care of you so when something like that happens you just hope that you know nobody else got injured while you were doing what you were put over there to do so it's just it's one of those things where you're you're always looking out for the guy to the left the absolute best of us the absolute best god bless him and all the men and women who paid the ultimate price or close to it as they served us honorably on the fields of the middle east you might already own a firearm but what if you could start with less lethal methods to avoid the financial and mental repercussions of actually pulling the trigger this is where berna comes in that's byrna berna's less lethal launchers are equipped with tear gas and kinetic ammunition and designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes and berna is excited to introduce the all-new compact launcher it is sleek slim and it hits like a sledgehammer the same size as a smartphone allowing women to conceal carry everywhere comfortably and with confidence it fires at 400 feet per second which is a lot of power to stop aggressors in their tracks their pistols are american-made and hand assembled in fort wayne indiana with over 80 percent of the 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and hair health and even performance and recovery which is why colustrum has long been valued by some elite athletes as well if you are looking to take back control of your health from the inside out consider armra and they have a special deal for you go to armra.com slash megan or enter megan to get 30 off your first subscription order that's armra.com slash megan hey everyone it's me megan kelly i've got some exciting news i now have my very own channel on sirius xm it's called the megan kelly channel and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies along with the megan kelly show you're going to hear from people like mark halperin link lauren maureen callahan emily joshinsky jesse kelly real clear politics and many more it's bold no bs news only on the megan kelly channel sirius xm 111 and on the xm app todd nicely incredible steven siller junior who was just nine months old on 9 11 is now joining tunnel to towers foundation in what they're calling steel across america connecting a nation it's a nationwide tour that will transport an authentic steel beam from the world trade center to communities across the united states here's steven speaking with my old pal major garrett on cbs this steel is so important so traveling with it means the world this steel is a visual representation of the sacrifice and bravery made by so many men and women who were facing despair darkness and evil that day they stood up and said we're going to do better they risk their lives to save others so to be representing the foundation and traveling with this steel it means the world and for those americans who have no living business they're not going to be able to do that they're going to be memory of this what do you want them to know well i'm one of them so i was nine months old on september 11th so i completely understand growing up without the depth of knowledge of what occurred that day but you can learn and what happened should not be forgotten you've grown up with this what have you taken away from that it's been a really unique spirit experience growing up with that loss but just his story of bravery and heroism and what it's inspired in the wake of september 11th a terrible thing happened that day but so much good has happened since through the tunnels towers foundation and the work we get to do i've gotten to be a part of helping so many families now i get to travel the country teaching kids who didn't get to experience 9-11 what occurred that day and relating this steel to them it means the world to me world look at that him todd nicely no victim mentality whatsoever just forge forward lauren manning find a way live keep living keep living not complaining they're an example to us all wow the investigation into who committed 9-11 and how these terrorists were able to board these planes would result in the 9-11 commission the 9-11 commission report and so on for now i'm more interested in showing you this extraordinary clip of james woods our friend storied actor so accomplished talented telling an incredible story and by the way shout out to him for doing something about what happened here he i mean it's it's another very courageous move he told this story on the orally factor listen to this saw 22 when 9-11 happened we were all stunned and we all happened to be at my house that evening and my friend scott said to me you know remember that flight you took in august i said yeah i've been thinking about it all day he said well maybe you should call the fbi and i said i'm sure they're being inundated but i thought it over and i called the local office and within two minutes got a hold of a very intelligent young man a special agent there and he said well who took the report, and I said, "I hope I'm not wasting your time." He said, "Well, we have so many reports coming in." And he said, "And by the way, even if this leads to something, "we don't like to backwash information to people, "because in case they have to go to a trial "and be witnesses or whatever, so you won't hear from us." I said, "Well, great." And he said, "But we appreciate your calling." Quarter to seven the next morning, I get a phone call that actually wakes me up, And he said, we want to talk to you about the flight that you took in August. I said, oh, did the manifest match of any of the flights yesterday on my flight? He said, well, we can't tell you that. I said, well, look, I'll get ready, and I'll come down to the federal building. He said, we're outside your house. We'll just wait for you. Wow, 7.15. So this was serious. And I, and this is the only funny part of any of this, I said, how did you know where I lived? And there was a pause. He said, we're the FBI. We're the FBI. Thank you. So they came in, and I said, look, I'm dying to know, were these the guys? And he said, well, we've had 36,000 tips in one day, and there's two of us, and we're going to be at your house all this morning, so you can do the math, but we can't tell you, you know. So since then, I have identified for sure two of them as two of the terrorists who actually were not on Flight 11, but one was on Flight 175, and one was on Flight 77. And I've been told unofficially, not by the FBI, but by someone else in actually a higher level of government, believe it or not, just through a coincidence, through a mutual friend, that all four of them were terrorists involved. So it was just you and these four guys in first class, nobody else, right? No, no, there were a couple other guys. Were they nervous, too, or was it just you picking these guys out? As I explained to the FBI, they said, what was your first instinct? And aside from certain things like four guys getting on a transcontinental flight without any hand luggage, who, it's funny, I notice behavior because I guess I'm an actor, and it's kind of what I do. You always watch people, right? I just kind of observe people. It's something I've always been fascinated by, sort of like that scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton sit and watch people and sort of talk about who they might be. And there were four guys. When the flight attendant, who was a woman, came up to them, they literally ignored her like she didn't exist, which is sort of a kind of Taliban idea of womanhood as not even a human being. I mean, it seems their disrespect for women is so extraordinary. And they didn't order alcohol. And they said to me, what did you think these guys were? I said, well, I thought they were the four law enforcement officers or four terrorists, in that they had that thing that guys who are undercover or on a mission have between each other. Well, you were lucky. You're absolutely lucky that they didn't decide to do it a month before. Incredible. Incredible. He was a witness to it, and he said something. He did something about it. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stop what happened on 9-11. But think about it. That took guts. James Woods is such a treasure. He is a national treasure. God bless him and his beautiful wife, Sarah. You know, that's a lot. That's a lot to go through, to know that you were there with the terrorists, and you were on the plane that was a dry run for 9-11. And he can look himself in the mirror and say, I did something about it. I tried to stop it. Crazy. The bin Laden raid, one of the greatest moments in U.S. military history. It happened 10 years later. It happened in May of 2011. I remember because I was on maternity leave with my daughter, Yardley, who was born April 14th. And it was May, what was the date? I don't remember. May 9th, I want to say. 2011. That, thanks to the tireless work of our intelligence community, we found bin Laden hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. And we sent SEAL Team 6 and others. To go get him. Here is some footage of Americans cheering. Because when the news broke late that night that we had killed bin Laden, Obama came out. People gathered spontaneously at the White House and at Ground Zero and started cheering. Here's a bit of that. USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA It's time to celebrate. It's the epitome of gratification. Here again, where at least I know I'm free. And I won't forget the men who died for this flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A. Remarkable, isn't it? Young, old, Democrat, Republican, together joining on the streets of America to say the pledge, to sing, to pledge their loyalty to the United States, to celebrate the death, the murder. They're. The killing, not a murder, but the death of a hideous terrorist who's burning in hell right now. I mean, it's just what a moment. And that's really the other part of the September 11th story is how it brought us together as a people. And boy, did it ever. Did it ever. The day after the stock exchange was closed and there, it had. It had to reopen. It's the U.S. Stock Exchange. And there was an urging for everyone to go and buy one dollar of stock just to send a message. Did they ever. There was a question about whether the New York City Marathon should be run, which always happens in late September, or whether it would be, you know, too hard on the city or too hard on the first responders. They ran and people were dangling flags over the bridges, running. They were dangling with flags around them, holding up flags for the runners. Actually, my husband, Doug, was one of the runners that year. He got in. He wasn't even a runner. He had registered. He had forgotten that he had registered for it. And then he got a notice after 9-11 that he made it. And he said, gosh, can I run a marathon? He said, I'm going to run the loop in Central Park. And if I can do that, I've got to do this. And he could run it. His feet were bloody by the end, but he was so glad he did it. It was the most patriotic he said he's ever felt. And he lost a dear friend on 9-11. And baseball, they just dropped an incredible documentary on the role of baseball in helping us heal from 9-11. And even for a non-sports fan like me, you couldn't stop but appreciate baseball. You couldn't help but appreciate what the baseball world was doing to help us heal. No one could forget. No one. Game three of the World Series, Yankees versus Arizona Diamondbacks. The game three was the first. The first one played back at Yankee Stadium and George W. Bush threw out the first pitch. It was October 30th, 2001. Watch. For tonight's ceremonial first pitch. And please welcome the president of the United States. The president of the United States. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President. What a feeling. Obviously, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would architect a responsive strategy that would prove disastrous in many ways. We should not have gone into Iraq. We stayed too long in Afghanistan. But look, we needed that guy in the wake of that attack. And it's the reason many of us, even if we have problems with the foreign policy as it was played out, we'll always have a soft spot in our heart for that man, for George W. Bush. Who was just a civilian who volunteered to run for office. And before he knew it, was a wartime president, commander-in-chief in a military response that had to happen, though perhaps not in the way it did. Giuliani, who now, he's another one, you know, whose image has changed very much publicly. But if you live through 9-11, you still, you got, you got some, you got a soft spot in there for Giuliani. You know, it's, you can't not, if you remember, he became America's mayor that day and the way he handled himself on 9-11, kept cool in the storm, was a leader, was able to bring a calm to others, directed the city in a way. that they desperately needed. Same thing with the messaging. He actually retraced his steps on that day with Newsmax recently. And we have a bit of it cut. Watch this. And then I could see the two towers head on. And I would say I stopped. And I said, oh, my God. Because when you see it straight on, all the way up there, the flames coming out. It was the worst sight I've ever seen in my whole life. The police said, be careful. Things are coming off the building. And they're going as far away as up there. By things, it was like pieces of steel, pieces of debris. As he got closer to the towers, Giuliani ran into an old friend, New York City Fire Department chaplain Michael Judge. When I got to about right here, right over here, I saw Father Judge. And I always had a thing that I wanted to do. And I always would say to him, Father, will you please pray for us? So he would say, no, better if you pray. It'd be more unusual. God will pay attention. I said that to him. I didn't get the usual humorous response. Instead, I got, Mayor, this is really bad. He went like this. I'm glad you have big shoulders. Keep praying. Now, he never said that to me before. Later that morning, when the South Tower collapsed, debris crashed through the North Tower lobby, killing many inside, including Father Michael Judge, who stayed until the end, praying for firefighters and administering last rites to the dead. Hmm. Father Michael Judge was another name that became a household name after 9-11. We were together in our grief, in our horror, in our deep sadness for our country, and in our resilience, and our will to go forward together, to not stay down. That's all that's required to be strong, to be courageous. Just don't stay down. You get knocked down, you get back up. That's it. You keep going, like Lauren Manning. You make the choice. This will not be my last day. I will keep living. I have things to do. I have people to be with, people who love me, people I love. Here, now, around me, who I can see and I know, or maybe just the promise of them. In the future, and you can see it. The unity, I mean, there's no better example of it than what happened on the steps of the U.S. Congress right after the towers went down. I mean, right after the events of 9-11 that morning. This was spontaneous, and it was healing, and it was something I don't think we'll ever, see again. When members of the U.S. Congress came out in front of the Congress and started singing God Bless America spontaneously. Watch this. Thank you, Cyber. Thank you, Cyber. Through the night with the light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, wide with home. God bless America, my home sweet home. When have we seen that kind of, you know, unity amongst members of Congress since? When have we felt it as a country since? A couple of moments here or there, like I showed the night Bin Laden was killed. But it's been, it's been rare. I'm going to leave it at this. Speaking of Giuliani. He was such a leader, as I said, and had a lot of sage commentary around 9-11 for years and years and years and whatever. I know he's gotten very political and people have a problem with him, but I will always remember him for the way he behaved around this event. And he said the following, the attacks of September 11th were intended to break our spirit. Instead, we have emerged stronger and more unified. We feel renewed devotion to the principles of political, economic and religious freedom, the rule of law and respect for human life. We are more determined than ever to live our lives in freedom. Right on. In memory of the thousands who died that day and in the years thereafter from the toxic pit that became ground zero from the sacrifice that was made on the fields of Iraq, Iraq and Afghanistan and otherwise. We remember you. We remember why you died. And we will try to remember the unity that enveloped much of the country in the wake of your deaths. We'll see you Monday. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. Today's episode was brought to you by SuperSure.