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| - False: Video doesn’t show Donald Trump calling 9/11 attacks ‘an inside job’
Video footage featuring a speech made by former U.S. President Donald Trump began circulating widely on several Chinese social media platforms on Jan. 29 with a claim that Trump denied that the 9/11 attacks were instigated by outside forces.
The Chinese subtitles of his election campaign speech on Jan. 22 in Laconia, New Hampshire, read:
「事实上我们没有遭到袭击，世贸大厦没有遇袭（911事件）。你们所看到的袭击并不是你们想的那样… 事实上，没有其他国家参与其中」
The sentences can be translated to: “Actually, we were not attacked. The World Trade Centre never got attacked. The attack you saw was not what you think. In fact, no other countries were involved in the attack.”
Video clips of various lengths showing this speech appeared on platforms like Douyin, Kuaishou, and Weibo. The ones uploaded by Jianghuai Daily and Yu Video garnered close to 5,000 likes before they were deleted. The same claim kept spreading through many other posts as well (for example, here and here).
Another version of the same footage with different Chinese subtitles also circulated on Weibo and X. According to the Chinese translation in this clip, Trump not only denied that the 9/11 incident was “an attack,” implying it was an inside job, but also stated:
「他们让我闭嘴了四年… 其他国家也参与了这事… 北约天天让我们的纳税人为了欧洲花钱，当我们跟傻子一样。拜登tmd每个月南部边境进来30万乱七八糟没有审查的人」
“They made me keep my mouth shut for four years… and other countries were in on this as well… NATO makes our taxpayers spend money every day for Europe, treating us like idiots. TMD [Chinese expletive] Biden let 300,000 people cross the southern border every month without vetting them.” (Translation by Annie Lab)
Together, the Chinese posts have over 7,000 likes, 800 comments, and 800 shares at the time of writing.
Conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks, such as the “inside job hypothesis,” surface routinely on the internet despite being fact-checked over and over again.
Annie Lab found a YouTube channel called The National Desk that live-streamed the campaign event and included Trump’s complete speech.
The clip circulating on social media fueling conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks starts at 00:24:25.
In the video, Trump mentions the World Trade Centre to emphasize that during his four-year presidency, there was no comparable scale of attack on the United States while other nations suffered from similar attacks.
He did not say or imply that the 9/11 attack was staged nor denied outside involvement in the incident.
In our investigation, we also learned that during his term, Trump attended 9/11 ceremonies and recalled the moment he saw the second plane hitting the World Trade Centre. He also funded the National September 11 Memorial in New York for its operation.
Some parts of the Chinese subtitles in the viral videos could have been the result of mistranslations.
For example, he said, “We didn’t have the attacks like you have seen, certainly that you see in other countries,” after he discussed how the United States had “no terrorism” and “no attacks” like the 9/11 during his term.
The former speech was taken out of context in the Chinese subtitles to falsely indicate he meant no foreign forces were involved in the September 11 attacks.
However, other parts of the subtitles are inconsistent with what he says in the video in English.
Trump doesn’t mention NATO or Joe Biden but discusses the U.S. involvement in the Middle East over the years.
He did comment on President Biden’s various policies in the speech, but the video shared with Chinese subtitles does not show that part.
Snopes has also looked into similar claims in other languages.
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