Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made another dubious claim about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks during Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate.
“When you had the World Trade Center go, people were put into planes that were friends, family, girlfriends and they were put into planes and they sent back, for the most part, to Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “They knew what was going on. They went home and wanted to watch their boyfriends on television.”
But there appears to be no evidence supporting the real estate billionaire’s claim.
The Washington Post fact-checked Trump when he made similar statements earlier this month. As the paper noted, almost none of the 19 hijackers were married. Only two had wives, though neither appeared to have been in the U.S. before the attacks, which killed more than 3,000 Americans.
The Post also pointed to the 9/11 Commission report which found that most of the hijackers had cut off contact with their families leading up to the attacks.
Trump may have mixed up reports about a Saudi prince who was allowed to fly from Florida back to Saudi Arabia with some of his companions days after the terrorist attack.
Trump has been criticized for making other unfounded claims about 9/11. Last month he insisted that he watched on TV as “thousands and thousands” of U.S. Muslims celebrated the fall of the Twin Towers in Jersey City, N.J. While there were some reports of people cheering the attacks, there is no evidence that large groups gathered to do so.
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