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

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Megyn Kelly remembers September 11, 2001 25 years later, with a personal and powerful look back at that day. She discusses the exact way the 9/11 terrorists were able to hijack the planes on that fateful morning, the horrifying feeling seeing the plane hit the first World Trade Center tower and realizing what was actually happening, the final act of self-determination of the World Trade Center "jumpers" on 9/11, the story of the "falling man," how George W. Bush was reluctantly thrust into the spotlight after September 11, the powerful moments he had in the days after the terror attack that helped unite the country, some of the most powerful stories of September 11, the most powerful stories of bravery we saw on 9/11, the "man in the red bandana" Welles Crowther and other heroes from that tragic day, and more.  Herald Group: Learn more at https://GuardYourCard.comTax Relief Advocates: End your tax nightmare today by visiting us online at https://TRA.com or call 800-575-6845Byrna: Go to https://Byrna.com or your local Sportsman's Warehouse today.ARMRA: go to https://tryarmra.com/MEGYN to get 30% off your first subscription order  Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan 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, 2001, have an obligation to make sure that everyone remembers that date, too. Already with the information

and 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 podcast 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 has 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 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 I don't, 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 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 Durban 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 guardycard.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'd come to visit me that you never had to leave the house in order to say you'd seen Manhattan 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 Star 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. office just prior. And I say that because while I understood, my license read 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 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 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, 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, Muhammad 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 as much as possible. The third flight, United Flight, or 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. Muhammad 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. And 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 if 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 Jawa Here, 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 hydrogen.

Jackers. 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 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.

something 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 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 Muhammad Atta was at the controls. At 8.19 a.m. at the rear of Flight 11, the flight attendant, Betty Ong, used a seatback air phone to call the American Airlines office in 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 mates that we can't breathe. I don't know. I think we'll get an hijack. Is that American 11 trying to call?

We have some claims that stay quiet and you'll be okay. We're turning to the airport. And who's trying to call me here, Bill? American 11, are you trying to call? Nobody moved. And the airplanes. So you heard Betty there, and then you heard the voice of Muhammad 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. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself in the airplane. Just stay quiet, trying to get compliance so he could do what he had in mind. 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 842 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 Jara. 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 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, 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. were 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 fire fighter turned the camera upward and showed us, just happened to show us

that moment of Flight 11. There was a rule of 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. Now, 25 years later, we will show it. enough time is passed that doesn't feel as jarring and wrong as it did then, but only once.

Here it is. And I think there's made that we can't breathe. I don't know. I think we'll get in high debt. Something, somebody hit the World Trade Center or the World Trade Center. There's a fire on the upper floors. This just in, you were looking at obviously a very disdain. 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 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 Ayles' heart forevermore after that. He, 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 didn't. 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 floor's 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.

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 Breiley, who is 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 the falling man appears to be wearing an orange undershirt underneath his work shirt and Riley frequently wore one. beneath a 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 and the fright to those who died who were on the

ground at least one person was died 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 face that day, innocent people who were just trying to do their jobs and go to work. But this man, Briley'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. What kind of a loving God wouldn't catch them? 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 editor's 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. 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 Abadabad, Pakistan, about to kill the man who unleashed that hell on America. Osama bin Laden. When this 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, Siltim 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, Megan Kelly, 2020 or 2021, it'll come up. If you have a two-hour driving 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 at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

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 CIA 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 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. 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 Hanson, 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 Parker, this leftist podcaster,

he said, America deserve 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? You look at Christine Lee Hansen and you tell me that. 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. I was going to say inhuman courage, but it's not.

That's the beauty of it. 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 Hansen at 903 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, We heard his first cries and his last ones.

Lee Hansen looks at the television and sees his son's plane disintegrate. The right engine pierces the entire tower and lands five blocks away. Here's that moment when it 903 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 first. 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 injury, 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, tell 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, has real solutions to fix your tax problem. Don't lose hope. TRA can often reduce or completely eliminate what you owe. Their focus is taxes and helping people and businesses resolve IRS problems.

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Tax relief advocates, real solutions for real people. At 908 a.m. at the Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, President Bush was reading to a class of children being watched by reporters as he did it. The White House chief of staff at the time, Andy Card famously whispers in his ear. America is under attack. The president decided not to rush out. He didn't want, he said later, to scare the children and send ripples of panic throughout the country. Press secretary at the time, Ari Fleischer, was standing in front of the media holding up a sign that red 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. President would have plenty to say just a short time after. At 920, 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 to know i want you all to know i can't go any I want you all to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people who's lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn. This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut.

we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. I can hear you. 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, 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. Get out of here. This is the cockpit. At 9.37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77. Again, this is 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 question about whether a bomb had gone off there. There was like a car bomb or there was something. something else. And there was a false report of a car bomb, 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. 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 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 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. 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.

You know, 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 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 talk 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, 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 reporter 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 the towers have fallen. And he said,

what do you mean? I said the twin towers are, 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 movies, 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. an 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. They were 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. Slide 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 knew he and he knew 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. 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 life 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 Miss Serity morning. I told him, I said, and you have two boys, David and Andrew. She said, yes, yes, I do. I said, and you're 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 and his family very much. And I gave her a 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 and 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 safe because that 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. Back to the timeline, 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 be to get out. People saw the firefighters going up in the North 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 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. And 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 don't know. We can get all the apparatus still. I'm trying to let them know where you are.

And for us, sir. We're smoke really bill, 105, two power. All right, sit tight. We'll get to you as soon as we can. Yeah, you're saying that, but the smoke's really bad, man. It's a good we can do. Where are you? What's where are you guys up to?

We're getting there. We're getting there. Because it feel like you're married and I get young kids. I understand that, sir. We're on the way. We do. We have everything, sir. I know you do, but doesn't seem like you're doing.

Doesn't seem like you've got lots of people up here. I don't know you go out in the bird and go up on the top. Smoke rise is you get really good. We're on the floor. We're in a window. And then, I know, we have to be in green here. Can't see. It's good God to blow her in from the left. Does anybody else want to try it in here? in here?

There's young men who are not ready to die. I'm everything for my right. I called and said I was leaving a building outside. I'm dying. Hello? Hello? We're looking over here. They're looking at all.

We're looking at the financial center. Two drivers, two broken windows. Oh, God. 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 her mother and love 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 Doi's office was located. She called 911 at 917 a.m. This 911 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. Is it, are they going to be able to get somebody up here?

Well, 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 to go breathing. Some people are worse. Some people are unconscious. Everybody's awake.

So far, yes. Listen, everybody's awake. Yeah, so far. And it's very hot, dear, but no, far. fire, right? I can't see. No, no, hot. 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, we 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 one. Stay calm with me. Stay calm. Please. Listen, listen.

The call is in. I'm documented. I'm going to let them. Hold the one second, please. I'm going to die, right? No, no, no, no. I'm going to die. Man, no, say your prayers.

I'm going to die. We're going to think positive because you've got to help each other to get off the floor. I'm going to die. I'm going to stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. Please, God. You're doing a good job, ma'am. You're doing a good talk. You're going to be.

It's so hot. Wait, wait, wait, we have voices. I'm so bad. Hello! Help! That's what I'm doing. I'm just let you know. Okay.

Hello, ma'am. You're still. Ma'am. Ma'am. Stay calm. Stay calm. Can you, can you... Can you...

Can you... Can you... I'm going to say with you. I'm dying. They're here? Are they inside with you yet, dear? No. Okay.

are. Man, stay, stay calm until they get inside. My name is Evelyn, what, ma'am? Yes, ma'am. She had backed away from the phone for that second portion of the call, which is why she was a little tougher to hear, but she was saying, tell her she's the best mom in the world. I love her with all of my heart and soul. I will see her in the next world.

Tell her, I love her so much. I love her. She was the best 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 911 call would prove very important. And I have to say, like, what a shout out to the 911 operator there. And, of course, on with Todd Beamer and others, because 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, 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 a soothing bomb. Like, give their mind a purpose. Give them an active thing to focus on other than the horror around them. I don't know if they train the 911 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 would have known it was a possibility. And she just shared a lot of character and calm under pressure. And the 911 operators are also unsung heroes of the day. Not to mention the, you know, the electricians, the workers, all of 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.

As I said, 12,000 FDNY members diagnosed with a 9-11 related illness. In total, they're putting it around beyond that. 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 story they know from books. And in fact, there was a poll that showed a majority of them 18 to 24 today, say they first learned about the attacks in class through schoolwork. They didn't learn about it from a family member. 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 something out of World War II.

It just 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 2 hit, Jojo said. The second impact came at 903 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 Wells Crowther, 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 under 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 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, 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 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 eleven 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. 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. GERN's grip 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 had recently laid a narrow strip of grass. Everything else was cement and McCatum. 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 can stay down when 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'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's had untold numbers of surgeries, the pain associated with those kinds of burns,

and that kind of surgery is well documented, 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.

As Lauren Manning got out of the building, I mentioned Wells Crowther, he and other were still up above saving others' lives. Told this story on AM Update this week, and we mentioned it on the program. President Trump just posthumously awarded Wells Crowther the Presidential Medal of Freedom just this week. He was a 24-year-old equities trader and volunteer firefighter.

Survivors described a man in a red bandana, guiding people to safety, and then returning time and time and time again. to help people, help people to safety. His parents didn't know exactly what had happened to Wells. They knew he died on 9-11. They didn't know how. But they knew when he was a little boy that his dad had given him a red bandana,

gave him a white one. He said, Wells, with the white one, the white one is for blow, blowing your nose. And the red one, sorry, reverse that. The red one is to blow. and the white one is to show. And he loved his red bandana. Here he is wearing it.

And Wells would wear that red bandana for the rest of his life. Apparently he wore it all the time. He wore it when he played lacrosse in college. He wore it when he was out with his buddies. He had it when he was working in the World Trade Center. And he used it that day to cover his mouth and nose as a screen for the smoke. And multiple people would describe who did make it out being rescued by the man with a red bandana or the red handkerchief. And his mother, Alison Crowther, read their accounts in the newspaper.

And here she is speaking to Fox 5 this year, just a couple days ago. I would say to him, Wells, I love you so much. Such a beautiful soul. And his loss is still painful today. Allison might never have known about her son's heroism had it not been for a red bandana he wore around his face. Wells got his first bandana from his dad when he was a kid, with the fatherly advice to always carry one in case things get messy. He kept a red bandana at his desk at Sanler O'Neill. And one day one of his coworkers came up and says, Wells, what is it with that red bandana?

Why do you always have that red bandana? And Wells picked it up and he held it up and he said, with this red bandana, I'm going to change the world. And I think he's doing that now. 9-11 Wells covered his face with a red bandana as he put his own safety aside, walking up into the South Tower to help bring others to safety. Allison learned of her son's bravery after she read newspaper accounts from survivors who talked about being helped by a man who had his face covered with a red bandana. He was just fearless, really fearless.

I never saw him afraid of anything. Thank you so very much, Mr. President, for this enormous honor that you've bestowed upon my son, Wells. 25 years after September 11th, his life continues to remind us of something very simple. In moments when others need us, each of us has the power to choose courage, compassion, and service. That's the real meaning of the red bandana. To be courageous. To find the good. To be the good.

Incredible and good for President Trump for honoring him in that way. I'm sure that was this healing bomb to the family, and he didn't have to do it. Trump doesn't get enough credit for his heart and his empathy for people who are suffering and who do heroic things. I mean, it's really pretty extraordinary. It makes you wonder why it hadn't happened prior to now. But God bless him, and God bless that family. The everyday heroes are the ones who really make you sit up in

noticed, don't they? I mean, it's like there was a story of two guys. It was, hold on a second, their names are Brian Clark and Stanley Pramnath. And there was, there was a story about how Clark, Brian Clark was a volunteer fire warden on the South Tower's 84th floor. He was descending the tower and he heard Pramath calling from the devastated 81st floor. So he went to help him. I mean, again, he didn't have to do that. He could have just kept going and saved himself. That might be one's instinct, but not for Brian Clark. They wound up escaping together using Clark's flashlight to navigate the stairs. A year later, Brian Clark gave Stanley the flashlight, and it became a physical reminder of their escape and their bond. Here's a little bit more about these two

from Spectrum from just the other day, September 9th. was a couple thousand yards away. Within split seconds it was getting larger and larger. All I remember doing was screaming, Lord I can't do this, you take over. And I dove under the desk. And with the most thunderous sound, the plane just smashed into the building. When I got out from under the desk, the plane was there in flames. A huge chunk was stuck in my office doorway 20 feet from where I was. The air pressure was so great it was sucking everything out. I'm gonna die. So I'm screaming, Lord, please send somebody, anybody to help me.

Somebody heard at the other end of the floor. As I got closer to the wall, I can hear faint and the person saying, bang on the wall and I'll know where you are. So I'm hitting the wall. I can hear you. Now climb over. Hollow ceiling. Couldn't do it. The person says, try again.

Think about your children. Think about your family. And I made a fist as tightly as I could. My fist passed right through that. And I pushed my head through and the man yanked my head. And I don't know how to thank this man who just saved my life. And he got up and he fixed his jacket and he's that. And he says, Brian Clark, like a robot.

And he said something that I'll go to the grave remember him. All my life I live as an only child. I always wanted a brother. And I find that man today. And this man put his hand around my shoulder. there. Come on, buddy. Let's go home. Wow. Incredible. Good for them. Imagine having your friendship begin under those circumstances. And imagine as you evacuate the World Trade Center, fearing for your life legitimately,

validly, stopping because you heard somebody and saying, I'll risk it. I'll risk my own life, my future with my family to help this other. And imagine being someone like, well, Crowther who did it over and over and over again when you had your entire life ahead of you. And he was made an honorary firefighter by the fire department in Nyack, New York, where he was from, um, later. There are lots of ways to become a firefighter as well as proved. Steven Siller, I've got to mention him. We did tons of work with Tunnel to Towers Foundation.

And I love Frank Siller. He's part of Stephen's family. but his story was remarkable. Stephen was the father of five. He was 34 years old. He was part of Brooklyn Squad 1, his firehouse. He had just finished his shift. He was on the way to play golf with his brothers

when he got word over the scanner of a plane hitting the North Tower. He drove his truck to the entrance of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, but it had already been closed for security purposes. He 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 Tunnel 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. Only 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. It's always the last Sunday in September, not necessarily the 29th. It's still ongoing.

the foundation now if they help firefighters first first responder families who lose their 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 tunnelsy towers foundation will build them a smart home so that they can live independently and reclaiming 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? 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? He said no.

And your first response was, did anyone else get hurt? She said no. He 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 had just been told that you had lost 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 up 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 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.

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can support metabolism, skin and hair health, and even performance and recovery, which is why colostrum 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.com, consider Armra.com, slash Megan, or enter Megan to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's A.RMRA.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 X-M. 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 Dushinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news, only on Megan Kelly channel, Sirius XM 11, and on the Sirius XM app. Todd Nicely, incredible. Stephen Siller, Jr., 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 Stephen 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 deal, it means the world. And for those Americans who have no living 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 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 of 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. 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, story-dactor, 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 another very courageous move. He told this story February 15, 2002. So this is just months later on the O'Reilly 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 overnight, call the local office. And within two minutes got a hold of a very intelligent young man, a special agent there, 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 got 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 and 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 715 so this is quarter to seven the morning I said 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 know we're the FBI we're the FBI thank you so they came in and I I said, look, I'm dying to know where 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 gonna 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 a, 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 was just you and these four guys in first class?

Nobody else, right? No, no, there was a couple of 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 with me. You always watch people, right?

I just kind of observe people. It's something I've always been fascinated by, sort of like the scene in Annie Hall, where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton sit and watch people. 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,

kind of a Taliban idea of womanhood as a, you know, not even a human being. I mean, it seems their disrespect for women is so extraordinary. And they didn't order alcohol. And they just said to me, you know, what did you think these guys were? I said, well, I thought they were the four law enforcement offers. Those were four terrorists.

In that they had that thing that guys who are undercover or on a mission, have between each other. And it's impossible to explain it. Well, you're 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, it 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. It's, 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 Ten years later, it happened in May of 2011. I remember because I was on maternity leave with my daughter, Yardley, who's 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 Abadabod, Pakistan, and we sent ZL 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. We feel really, really vindicated that we finally got him. This is our generation's VEVJ Day. This is our generation's victory and enduring Freedom Day. That's what today is. I'm proud of our military and proud of our president's Bush and Obama.

You kill innocent American people. You're going to pay the price. It's time to celebrate. It's the epitome of gratification. It's one nation. A need. USA! USA!

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, 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 it had to reopen, it's the U.S. Stock Exchange. And there was an urging for everyone to go and buy $1 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 with flags around them, holding up flags for the runners. Actually, my husband Doug was one of the runners that year. He got any, it 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. 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 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 one played back at Yankee Stadium and George W. Bush. Throughout the first pitch, it was October 30th, 2001.

Watch. for tonight's ceremonial first pitch and please welcome the president of the united states 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 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

I don't know it's the worst side I've ever seen 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 with him. I always would say to him, Father, will you please pray for us? So he would say, no, better if you pray, it's 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. You went like this. I'm glad you have big shoulders. Keep praying. And I 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 rights to the dead. Father Michael Judge was another name that became a household name after 9-11.

We were together in our grief, in our horror, and 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 nine, 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. the light from a lot. To the prairies, to the oceans, white with all. When have we seen that kind of 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 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 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 Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

Today's episode was brought to you by Super Sure.