U.S. President Donald Trump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 13, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)
A New York Times headline is drawing criticism Friday for implying that President Donald Trump is "moving on" after 25 years of remembering the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Reporter Peter Baker penned a column highlighting how far away President Donald Trump was from Ground Zero at the ceremony Friday. All former presidents were in New York City for the event, while Trump was at the Pentagon. According to reports, Trump didn't want to go to Ground Zero because politicians are not allowed to speak. Trump denied this, saying that if he wanted to speak, he's certain they would have let him.
Baker noted that it paints quite a picture of Trump as an outside of American presidents.
"The disparate images will be stark and telling: four presidents of both parties standing together where the twin towers fell, four presidents whose time in office was shaped to one extent or another by the war on terrorism that gripped the nation for so long. And then the sitting president honoring the occasion at another attack site, estranged from his predecessors and governing at a time when fear of foreign attack has receded into the background of American life," said Baker.
"With the distance of a quarter century, Mr. Trump’s presidency has moved past the days when terrorism drove the agenda. Just as memories of Pearl Harbor lingered long after World War II ended, the memories of Sept. 11 remain powerful long after the death of Osama bin Laden. But the country and its politics have moved on," Baker continued.
The idea of moving on from Sept. 11 sent the internet into a fury. Many felt the characterization is painting a rosy picture of the romanticized "coming together" part of Sept. 11 and its aftermath. The consequences of Sept. 11 remain, many argued, embedded in surveillance and anti-Muslim sentiment, all of which are alive and well in Trump's presidency.
Bloomberg reporter Gerry Doyle questioned, "I'm sorry what," seeing the headline. "I understand what each word means individually but I am struggling with them being in this order."
"The headline says everything about what is now vs. what used to be the New York Times (RIP)..." said one New Yorker.
"He literally just launched an illegal and unprovoked war in the Middle East that will take a really long time to lose," said The Guardian's Julia Wong. "How does Peter Baker tie his shoes in the morning? I mean my lord. It's honestly hard to think of a single relevant aspect of trumpism as it's remaking American life in 2026 that is not rooted in the post-9/11 expansion of the surveillance state, attacks on civil liberties and politicized xenophobia and bigotry but okay sure."
Journalism professor Jerry Berger quoted a key piece in the column reading, "Americans today are more afraid of one another than they are of foreign terrorists."
"What could The New York Times possibly mean by this headline? Maybe it got cut off and they meant 'moving on to become a fascist dictatorship'? Maybe instead of 'moving on' they meant to write 'sinking under'?" asked Ken Calderia, of the research consortium Conceptual Investigations Unit.