Friday 6am - 25th Anniversary of 9/11

0:00Toronto today with Greg Brady. Remember, 9-11, 25 years later. Plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Where were you? Were you close? I was like a black whey, and then it started running. It was the night. Today, we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. Our six o'clock hour, thanks very much for being up early. If it is indeed early, where you are. So for whomever and wherever, welcome in and thanks very much. My name is Greg Brady. The show is Toronto today with Greg Brady. We're wrapping a week off of Labor Day. And you ever know that sort of familiar ache. It could be just a just a noteworthy moment in your life. That's more negative than a positive. I think that's what today is for so many people on the 25th anniversary of September 11.

1:05I started to feel it basically the first thing Tuesday on September the 8th. That should be the first day of school. Maybe I had too much time without actually taking or knowing that a one of my children was headed off to school. Maybe I've just had more time to think about it, but it is sort of a dull familiar ache. And I've had it since Tuesday. And yet I think it's important to remember those things. When it's people you've lost, mistakes you've made, things that haven't worked out that you hoped it would. Sometimes those things come around in an anniversary fashion and you're not quite sure what to do with it. And I think today is a little bit of that. But also I think you even from the conversations we've had this week and last week regarding Canada and America. And I would make the case Western society as a whole not to fall on back on a cliche. You know I hate them, but a lot more unites us than separates us.

2:06Canadians really like Americans and Americans really like us. And we're having a bit of a divide right now. It hasn't been pretty. That's given me a dull familiar ache in my stomach as well. But when I think about what we were 25 years ago, a lot's changed. And some of the things are the same and some of the things have changed. But there's an emotional weight. I don't know if you have it. Maybe you don't. But if you're listening to me right now, looking out at what's going to be a beautiful Friday, maybe you're working, maybe you've got the week off, maybe that ache is there. And it's both things, right? Can you be sad and angry at the same time? Little more one than the other? I'm both just profound sadness to think about how I felt 25 years ago and how you probably felt as well. I didn't lose anybody close in 9-11. I didn't have to be profoundly sad. Devastated for all these lives. People doing nothing wrong, going to work, living their lives and just extinguished.

3:13And then there's the anger. And is the anger more about that day or about the next 24 years and 365 days? Anger, the monsters, the maniacs who flew those planes. But whether it's partly as well, how we understood what we're supposed to do and how we're supposed to react ever since. I think they live kind of side by side each other. I do. Because I think there were lessons to the, there's always lessons to grief. And I think there was an element of our public discourse and leaders try and follow, read the pulse of the public discourse. Sometimes too much. You hear me complain about that and especially with incumbent politicians, they're trying to read how we feel and react. We should be reacting to them. We elected them. They do work for us. But when we watch buildings collapse and thousands of people die and we're collectively mourning, not knowing when life's going to be normal again. It's, there's no way to get back a world that is similar to September 10th, 2001.

4:14There's no way. There wasn't any way. We knew that then. It's just profoundly sad and profoundly enraging at the same time to recap some of this, but also to give you something I think was significant. You're going to hear a bit about Gander Newfoundland today and I'll explain why on a couple different levels. But this may remind you of you where you were, how you initially reacted. I'm getting ready to go on the air. I had the nine to noon show a show regrettably called midday mayhem. I'm not, it was in the mid days, but I'm not sure how much mayhem there was. Maybe there, maybe there was radio is just constantly full of mayhem, just ask around, but there was mayhem certainly in 2001. We're getting ready to go on the air and then we realize we won't beat, we, our story probably would have been just the first plane going in to the world trade center had been an accident. That's a one day story. How could this happen? Who could fly off course like this? How was this mistake made? That's certainly what we were thinking as our show got ready to go on the air at nine

5:18a.m. And on WDFN Detroit sports radio 1130, the fan lookout. There not an existence anymore. Unfortunately, but here's some of the media coverage on television of that first plane and you can't blame anybody thinking it was an accident. It's not necessarily talking about a deliberate act here. I wouldn't think so immediately at all. You've got to find out why he crashed. And if obviously if it's a deliberate terrorist act and there'll be a message probably from somebody taking credit for it. I am in Chelsea and we are at eight and sixteen. We are the tallest building in the area and we, my window faces south. It looks directly onto the World Trade Center and I would say approximately ten minutes ago there was a major explosion from probably, it looks like about the 80th floor. It looks like it's affected probably four to eight floors. Major flames are coming out of the, let's see the north side and also the east side of

6:25the building. And it was very loud explosion followed by flames. It looks like the building is still on fire on the inside. So this was around eight forty, well in the eight thirty to nine o'clock range. Flight ninety three took off from Newark International Airport more on that in a minute, but a couple of other flip planes. Flight eleven on American Airlines. Flight seventy seven on American Airlines. Both took off. One from Boston, one from Washington DC at eight forty six a.m. Flight eleven crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center between the ninety third and the ninety nine floors. Just eighty seven people on board that plane killed instantly hundreds of people inside killed instantly and everyone above that ninety nine floor is trapped. Everyone above that impact zone is trapped. Then the hijacking of flight seventy seven, it's overall high. And they turn off their transponder. They had back towards Washington DC and then about thirteen minutes later at nine o'

7:26o'clock at three a.m. Literally our show is supposed to start about a minute or two after that. We get this moment with United Airlines flight one seventy five and the south tower of the World Trade Center. Yes, I just saw a plane go in to the building. As you look at the picture from our chopper now arriving at the scene, Jim Friedel in Hoboken has said it appeared to bank sharply and smash directly perhaps purposefully into oh my goodness. There's another one. Oh my goodness, there's another one. It seems to be on purpose. Oh my goodness. Now you. No, it's obvious. I think that there's a second plane just crashed into the World Trade Center. I think we have a terrorist act of proportions that we cannot begin to imagine at this juncture. We'll try to get a better vantage point and see what we can see on the ground. It's a little difficult from the air because the buildings kind of shadow the streets but

8:26no doubt a lot of activity on the ground right now. And in terms of the firefighting capabilities when you get up to this high level, I assume the firefighters have got to get up there and you know, fight it from inside. Oh, if you're taking a look now, you can see that we've just had another explosion and that is considerably lower. Is that in the other building? Is that what I'm witnessing? That apparently does look like it isn't the other building at this point. No report of any casualties without jumping the too many conclusions looking at the extent of this damage and knowing how well populated that building is at that. Oh, there's another explosion down to the left side on the second World Trade Center tower. You see that huge ball of fire that just went up there. I know it's quite a distance shot. That's amazing when you're thinking about things, processing things, but you must keep talking easier to do when you've got a partner more difficult to do when you're on that

9:27was Charlie Gibson on ABC on Good Morning America. For some reason, heading towards 9 a.m. he's by himself there. So he's processing. We all had to speculate. We all had to think on the fly. I mean, I don't know how to change my oil and I'm not even good at ironing, but I know how to do that. I can do that. I can think about one thing and talk about another and still give you what you need to be given, but I have no idea what I said between nine and 10 o'clock while we were still on the air. We had a news affiliate in Cincinnati in Detroit and we went there at 10 o'clock, not because we couldn't handle phone calls, but many of us were like, I wanted to find where my sister was and my sister working in downtown Manhattan at the time. She was a field hockey coach at Columbia University, but she was coming in from Staten Island while working at Columbia and working at a magazine as well, part time called the week. They had an office near the Empire State Building. She's underground under the World Trade Center subway stop.

10:28She passes by that stop to get to her stop at the Empire State Building and she comes up skies black nine in the morning, sunny day. It was sunny when she left Staten Island. It was sunny when she went down into the subway. She comes up and sees black smell smoke all of it at 905 A and president George W Bush was at an elementary school classroom. You've seen it in Sarasota, Florida. You may have watched the video over and over and over again on the 11th of September and whether you loved Bush or not, you saw his humanity in that moment. He gets whispered the news. A second plane is hit the second tower. America is under attack and 20 minutes later, the only thing that I might consider was a little later than you'd like the FFA grounded every single plane, all civilian aircraft across the United States. You got to come down as quickly as swiftly as possible. Naturally, there were other reactions.

11:29Howard Stern was still unconventional radio then. He's not on satellite radio then at this point. Here's his cruise reaction after both planes crashed. Let me recap planes of crash into the World Trade Center. Two of them. One at nine o'clock, roughly a little before nine o'clock, then a second plane went into the building. About 18 minutes later. 48 minutes later, the Pentagon was attacked and one of the one of the World Trade Centers now is not existed. Yeah. And the other one is basically gone. Yes. Doesn't have a chance. They say even a third plane could be up in the air. All airports have been closed. Everything in an adamant hat is closed down. We're here in Manhattan broadcasting obviously. You know, they say three planes, but three planes are already crashed already. You think maybe that's the only three? No, you have a predict the Pentagon? Never. I mean, they thought there was a third one here. What's that noise? That's one of the military justice circling. Oh, the tip of Manhattan and the tip of Brooklyn. Howard, this is the ability. He's got to be shot. This has become one of those movies. Yeah. And the planes are flying over our home.

12:29Yeah. That is a war plane. It's a war plane. We just don't know with who? You know what's terrifying is that it's just a matter of seconds. We're watching the twin down the other tower. Burn it. It's coming down. Do you know that there's going to be another collapse? I hope that help people are just getting out of that area. That's from the Howard Stern show. Now we found my sister, but it wasn't easy to do back then. No texting. No one was texting anybody. And we found her about like two thirty in the afternoon. That's a long time from two planes crashing into New York knowing she takes her. I knew she took her subway past the World Trade Center. We found her. We figured she'd be okay. It's not going to be up the World Trade Center. Although when you live in Manhattan and you know people, you go visit people in their offices. You go for breakfast, you go for lunch, you do all those kind of things. So we quite didn't know where she was. And I bet you all of you listening. If you knew somebody that lives in New York City, it's the first thing you did. I called home to my parents on their landline. They still have that landline. So not everything's changed in 25 years.

13:29But I remember my dad coming on, he's a history teacher, absorbed news like sponge gave some of that to me. I'm not sure I absorbed it all. And he mentioned Osama bin Laden and he mentioned the Taliban. And right away, I'm like, he's probably right. Everybody suspected bin Laden tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 in the parking garage down below. And we fell right into the trap. All of us did after 2001 bin Laden said a trap. He knew he'd be afraid. He knew he'd have this tremendous existential clash. And we're still kind of at war and not at peace exactly with how it happened, why it happened. And I'll talk a little bit later in the morning about the core failure of our post 9-11 strategy that I feel pretty strongly about. We should kind of be angry at ourselves to some extent. I want to give you this though. The Canadian ambassador, Pete Hookstrip. He said some provocative things about Canada and Canadians during the trade war.

14:35CBC grabbed a hold of them. That's right. The network that wasn't going to call this ever again a terrorist attack. But CBC grabbed Pete Hookstrip in Gander, Newfoundland where he is to honor that community and all that Gander did for 7,000 Americans climbing off airplanes, not knowing what the hell it happened. And Hookstrip takes the high road. We can all learn. I'm not a big fan of Pete Hookstrip, but we can all learn from being the right person at the right moment and saying the right things. It's very, very clear. 9-11 is a special day in many places of the world, especially in New York, in Washington, in Gander. Some really great things happen. This is to say one more time, thank you. It's really, really important to say thank you. It's coming at a tense time between R2 countries. Some people don't even want you here. I wonder how you bridge that.

15:36This is, I know how I bridge it. This is for the people that 9-11 impact it. The 3,000 people that were killed, the 7,000 that made their way to Gander, the 9,000 people in Gander that opened their homes, opened their hearts to 14 different countries, primarily Americans. We'll get back to the economic issues, at least from our standpoint, when we get past 9-11. Yeah, it's a day to mourn. It's a day to reflect. It's a day to grieve. It's a day that I hope are continent, at least our two countries, have the same perspective, have the same heartbeat in Unison together. That's the way it always was. That's the way it's going to be again. I think that's the way it should be. Yesterday, very significant in Ontario politics. It might have slipped past you, but every time there's a cabinet shuffle or you hear of

16:38a cabinet shuffle, it means something. Now the legislature's not going to sit until after the municipal elections are over. So there's so many questions I think that we'd like to ask the premier, so many of the ministers as well, especially how education is going to go in schools with a lot of new rules in the first six, seven weeks. Colin D'Amella hosts focus on Terry, of course, on global news, and is our Queen's Park bureau chief. It's great to have you on Colin. Good morning. Good morning, thanks for having me. No problem. So everybody has sort of isolated the idea that the former Labour Minister David Puccini, and he's only the former in the last day and a half or so, is going to switch positions. But many feel this is sort of a cover for what could be a pretty damning report from the integrity commissioner about some funds that have gone from one set of hands to another set of hands. Is that the general principle the opposition parties are pointing to and going, this is about Puccini and not much else? Well, that's right. I mean, you know, the integrity commissioner in Ontario has been investigating David Puccini

17:42for the better part of a year now, looking to see whether any ethics rules at Queen's Park were broken, right? The central allegation here is that there was $2.5 billion in the skills development fund and that a lot of progressive conservative parties, supporters or donors may have been disproportionately favored in this process. In some cases, companies that were ranked lower were getting funding over companies that were ranked higher in whatever kind of ranking matrix that the civil service had had. So it raised a lot of questions about whether there was impropriety, whether there was wrongdoing, and whether the minister was personally putting his thumb on the scale. Unlike the Green Belt Greg where, you know, you're not talking about actual taxpayer money, this is taxpayer money, right? And the question of where was going, who was favoring, whether it was being used to curry favor or benefit donors to the PC party is an open question. And so yesterday of all of the moves that were made that were about nine moves in total,

18:43the one that really stood out was David Puccini. He's been moved from the minister of labor to the Ministry of Infrastructure. Now where he's been moved, it's quite a lateral move because he's not being demoted. Some, you know, could classify it as almost a promotion because the Ministry of Infrastructure is also this massive beast, right? And you think about how much the Ford government likes building. You know, it is a massive beast that involves a lot of contracting and procurement of contracts. So that's an interesting move. But, you know, the way the opposition is casting this is, this is a preemptive move by the government to get ahead of the integrity commissioner's report whenever that comes out. And everyone for months has been trying to do a lot of back of the napkin calculating here, trying to determine when this integrity commissioner report will come out. And nobody seems to know. It kind of just drops whenever the office determines it to drop. And so the government had been kind of playing this waiting game, right? Do we shuffle the minister after the report comes out or before the report comes out?

19:48And it seems like they just got tired of waiting and decided, okay, let's do the shuffle now. Move him out of that role to another ministry where he's still important, but maybe not as damaging. It's such an interesting debate. I've covered Doug Ford and obviously Queen's Park a long time and through much of Ford's tenure, I, I think there's a case to be made. The opposition makes it. Well, they don't make cabinet ministers and caucus members accountable, but there is a long list, isn't there of, of cabinet ministers? We just saw Stan show have to resign from cabinet all this controversy over thousands of dollars in hotel and expense claims. We just had a guy I like a lot. Rod Phillips on yesterday. He took a trip during COVID. He barely got to the airport when he was kicked out of his portfolio as finance minister. There's a longer list. There's the guy that went to Las Vegas, Khalid Rashid three years ago and he quit cabinet was out of the party very quickly. So I, I see the argument sometimes that it has to hit the public realm before Ford does anything, but I also see a lot of, a lot of ministers that have been slapped pretty hard

20:53and kicked out of cabinet entirely. Yeah, I mean, I think what the NDP might be referring to and look, accountability is determined in different ways by different parties, right? I mean, for the opposition parties, the word resignation or the minister should resign, that's like in their pocket ready to go at any moment. I mean, so for them, the bar is much lower and for the government, the bar is always going to be much higher. And you're right. I mean, there has to be public backlash and this is much as support government. This is most governments. There has to be a fever, pitcher, public backlash or something so egregious that would determine that that minister needs to go. And so for the Ford government, yeah, I mean, with David the Chini, it's an interesting gamble. Do you demote him or fire him before you've even seen the results of a report that you don't know what it's going to say? I suspect the government has an idea of what might be uncovered by the integrity commissioner in this report, but doesn't know the specifics.

21:54So why would you take the ultimate step if you don't really know what's in it? At the same time, they are trying to mitigate the risk. And if they can mitigate the risk now early enough, just before everything really pops off. Think about it when the legislature returns on in late October, who's going to be answering the questions? It'll be the new minister of labor Trevor Jones, who had nothing to do with the handing out of any skills development fund money and can easily kind of repeat talking points that have been given to him by the premier's office. So for the government, it kind of insulates them a little bit. It gives them a little bit of a buffer. And you're right. I mean, there have been a lot of ministers in this government who have resigned over a variety of scandals. I think for the NDP, the accountability might lie with almost everything. All those ministers as an example who were caught up in the hotel expenses scandal, the premier says a lot of them have paid the money back. They haven't offered the proof that they paid the money back. And none of those ministers were shuffled out of their role.

22:55So what does accountability mean? I think it really is up to interpretation by the NDP, by the government, and by individual taxpayers and voters at home. Remarkable. Hey, by the way, I don't know the answer to this. So you tell me you're, you're, you're shows part of my, my Sunday routine. I watched the American shows. Then I watched the West blog and I watched folks on Terry or when you back with a new season as it were. We're going to be coming back in about mid October. We're kind of aligned to, you know, when the legislature returns because that's when the bulk of a lot of information starts to come out. One topic though, I think that will be heavily discussed this fall in voluntary treatment for people who are suffering from mental health or addictions and might be on city streets. The number of homelessness in the province has been rising as well, Greg. And those two issues are very directly linked. The premier for the first time yesterday talked from a place of compassion and empathy. That's about the idea that maybe they have to start looking at involuntary treatment, getting people to help even though they might not automatically want it.

23:57And he's looking to talk to me as a palatist about it to see how they feel. A lot of municipalities want it because they are the ones who have to deal with a lot of the issues from a street level problem. So that I think will be a major discussion over the fall in voluntary treatment for those suffering with mental health. I think so. And a major municipal election issue and not just in Toronto, that's for sure. Colin, I'll leave it there, man. Have a great weekend. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. Colin Demelo, Queensborough Chief, joining us. Today in New York City, Canada will be represented by Pierre Paulierf at the 9-11, 25-year commemoration. Now, if I told you that would happen two years ago, you'd be like, make sense. He's going to be the prime minister. Well, that didn't happen. You're probably aware of this. It was in all the papers on April 26th of 2025. But he showed very well yesterday.

24:59And I do not see this as a person being opportunistic in a bad way. I think it's opportunistic in a good way. If you describe somebody as opportunistic, somehow that's deemed a slam. And I'm like, I'm impressed by people who see an opportunity, seize it, and do well with it. So well, there's a cabinet retreat at a, at a swishy swishy resort in BAMP for the federal liberals. Not saying they're not allowed to have a retreat. And they can stay where they want and eat what they want. I mean, it is our money after all, but fine. Paulierf is in New York City. He'll be there to honor the deceased Canadians, but also show brotherhood with the Americans who are grieving their saddest day in a long, long time, the 25 year commemoration of the worst terrorist attack on US soil ever. And we all were impacted by, we all talked about this. Paulierf made the point that he's made on a couple of podcasts, including when he went on Joe Rogan's podcast.

26:00Don't try and bait him into criticizing where we are with the carny government. I mean, there's been about 236 things that weren't promised during the election campaign. And I've told you before, I think Karne's a phenomenal politician. He's got people believing his cell. And I'm not saying all of it should be disbelieved either. But Joe Kernan on Squawk Box on CNBC yesterday, a pretty important financial show that a lot of people watch went in on Paulierf a little bit and you'll hear Paulierf respond in kind. Mark Karne was acting in good faith in those negotiations. I asked because one of the things you kept hearing from the Trump administration and how would Latin America in particular was that he was not. Well, I'm not going to attack my prime minister on foreign soil. It's just not something I'm going to do. My mission here, you would attack him on your own soil. Well, you can look up the debates of the House of Commons. No, that's why I'm not. I'm curious. I'm not a position leader of that. That's what the word means.

27:01I'm curious, as you saw this play itself out, where you signed Gleim for lack of a better word. Well, look, let's be honest, the administration hit us with tariffs first and everything escalated thereafter. And my mission here is to fight for my country, not to score political points domestically, politics ends at the border. And what I think we need to do now is leverage the single biggest asset Canada has in the US, which is our friendship with the American people who overwhelmingly love Canada. And my message to them is we can save money and jobs for both our people. If we get back to two-way, tariff-free trade, that will bring down the cost of living for Americans. It will grow paychecks on both sides of the border. So let's knock down those tariffs and focus on building a stronger, stronger, and with America for our two separate countries. Now I'm impressed by that. He's not saying our relationship is over. That's not for one man or woman to say. And yet that's what we've heard so much from the Prime Minister.

28:03There are a relationship at the US as we know it is now over. What permanently? Or is this a temporary fissure? Are we getting divorced or are we in marriage counseling? I mean, we need it. But we do. And at the same time, there's a post-Trump universe where this doesn't have to continue. Remember, every single democratic candidate, they've been the part of the world. Party of protectionism. I know from living there. They like the idea of protectionism. The Republicans wanted to span the world out, send jobs elsewhere. And yes, there's no doubt about it. There's some conflict among the two parties. I get that. I thought Polly Eve was impressive as hell yesterday, saying practical things. Now, there's a lot of people criticizing him. You'll get criticism in the public eye. You'll shurget criticism if you're the opposition leader. And he is clearly the most criticized opposition leader. I've ever seen in any country in my life. I've never seen anything quite like it. We would never allow somebody else to just mock whether he's wearing glasses or not,

29:04or whether he works out, or whether he's snippy with a reporter sometimes. Karne is consistently snippy with reporters. And the same people don't make the same comments. So I'm pretty tough on Doug Ford. And yet I think Doug Ford's done a great job going on US TV and documenting some of the issues and why let's patch this back up. We're going through a rough spot. But let's make this work. When he was doing that and not calling Trump names, he was being very statesman like that was very statesman like for Polly Eve there. I thought here's more of him on on CNBC or on Fox Fox business channel yesterday. If we have 50% tariff on cars or trucks being assembled in Canada and coming across, it's going to jack the price up and make it unaffordable. Everyone's going to lose. Customers will lose, manufacturers will lose. I mean, it just ain't worth it. Exactly. And think about the best selling truck for the last 49 years, Larry.

30:05F-series. F-150. And what goes around that? Canadian aluminum. So America can't produce enough aluminum because you're running out of electricity with all your data centers and aluminum is boxed electricity. You get your aluminum from us. You tariff Canadian aluminum. You pay more for your F-150. I want the Ohio electrician or the Texas plumber to pay less for his F-150 and make more money for our aluminum workers back home. We can make your homes more affordable with our soft with lumber, tariff free. We've got the fourth biggest supply of oil anywhere on earth. By the way, it's trading about $12 below the world price. So you get a discount on that. This is Calgary. This is Alberta. This is Canada. You're from Calgary. I'm from Calgary, so oil country. And we say we have the best resource in the world. We sell it to you at a discount. Let's get another pipe down to Texas. Great. Great. Great. More jobs for your refinery workers and lower gas prices for Americans. It's all possible through tariff free trade. I just think you did a really good job there.

31:06I think that was really, really good stuff. We're going to talk to a New York governor, George Pataki just after seven o'clock this morning. But I would make the note that it's absurd to even discuss the notion that I think Mark Carney is going to be seen as conspicuously absent today from New York City. I don't think it's an abdication of his duties, but I think there's so many optics. We played you Pete Hookster earlier on. Don't have to like Pete Hookster. Guys in Gander, Newfoundland. Mike gives a great answer about the relationship between the two countries and how Gander residents supported Americans. They made a musical about it. It was on Broadway before it was even here called come from away. We stood up and wrapped our arms around Americans getting off these planes totally days. The country under attack. You didn't know of another attack was coming or not coming on September 12th or 13th or the like and Pete Hookster says, yes, some problems right now. But I can't believe how amazing Canadians are or I can't believe it.

32:09I should say then he gets the CBC reporter going, well, some people don't want you here. Oh, okay. Like there's just a kind of a glaring absence on the big stage. We should be unconditional on this day of no others that you're our closest neighbor and ally going through some things right now. But life's about showing up. I don't think the prime minister should be in BAMF. I'm glad Pierre Paulie have stepped into that vacuum to project himself and he did great yesterday on television. He'll be amazing today on a day of terrible aching pain and solemn remembrance. Is that opportunistic? Yeah. In a good way. He gets the narrative of solidarity with our grieving friends, the United States of America. We'll stop. Rather remarkable broadcast moment on this 25th anniversary of 9 11 and I hadn't watched it in a few years. And it's actually harder to find than I thought it would be. Now worth noting, we got a different world, lots changed in 25 years.

33:09Also one praise worthy person in that in this monologue from the late show with David Letterman was Rudolph Giuliani. Before you start, he was the mayor of New York City at the time and you might have thought what I thought is doing a good job. You may have thought that it's it. Don't revise history. People change and opinions change. But it was really hard to not document the importance of Rudolph Giuliani in that moment. He has made some decisions, said some things, done some things that have painted him in a much more negative light. Democrats and Republicans seem pretty universal about that. But at the time, he was praise worthy for David Letterman. And on September 17th, six days after the 9 11 terrorist attacks, many of us hadn't just gone anywhere and done anything. I'm continuing to go into a nine to noon show on sports radio 11 30 to fan. But it's very much what do you talk about?

34:11It's like when are sports teams going to play games again? How are they going to get there? When can we flag in? I was supposed to go to a wedding by the way in Georgia on what would have been I think if I do the math correctly September 23rd. And I did. I had a friend of mine who was supposed to go to the wedding. She was like, I'm not going. It's too complicated. I'm like, I am going. That's one of my best friends. And I'm getting on that plane. Maybe you got on a plane in the couple weeks after as well. But Letterman went back to the late show and it was a deeply human bridge for a truly traumatized society and nation. We're all just trying to figure out how to function again. And he killed it. I'm going to do the late show. This is our first show on the air since New York and Washington were attacked. And I need to ask your patience and indulgence here because I want to say a few things. And believe me, sadly, I'm not going to be saying anything new. And in the past week, others have said what I will be saying here tonight, far more

35:12eloquently than I'm equipped to do. But if we are going to continue to do shows, I just need to hear myself talk for a couple of minutes. And so that's what I'm going to do here. It's terribly sad here in New York City. We've lost 5,000 fellow New Yorkers and you can feel it. You can feel it. You can see it. It's terribly sad. Terribly, terribly sad. But watching all of this, I wasn't sure that I should be doing a television show because for 20 years, we've been in the city making fun of everything, making fun of the city, making fun of my hair, making fun of Paul. So to come to this circumstance that is so desperately sad, and I don't trust my judgment in matters like this. I'm 28 years old watching that live and I'm on the radio and I can't believe you couldn't

36:13pay me enough to listen to whatever I said after 9-11, but you watch Letterman and you watch his platform. He's got a lot of help, lots of support around him. But I thought that's true composure. Still being self-deprecating, still being himself doesn't sound like somebody not himself. He also had spent some time in Montana and he told a story about this small town where he vacations probably has the biggest house in Montana. But this story, I watched it again last night and again, you're just holding it together to think about that moment in time and this community he describes. I just want to go through this and again, forgive me if this is more for me than it is for people watching. I'm sorry, but I just, I have to go through this. The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead, these people are missing and dead and they weren't doing anything wrong. They were living their lives. They were going to work. They were traveling. They were doing what they normally do.

37:14As I understand it and my understanding of this is vague at best, another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings and we're told that they were a zealots fueled by religious fervor, religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamn sense? I'll tell you about a thing that happened last night, there's a town in Montana by the name of Shoto. It's about a hundred miles south of the Canadian border. Then I know a little something about this town and it's 1600 people, 1600 people and it's an ag business community which means farming and ranching. Montana has been in the middle of a drought for, I don't know, three years. If you've got no rain, you can't grow anything and if you can't grow anything, you can't farm and if you can't grow anything, you can't ranch because the cattle don't have anything to eat. That's the way life is in this small town, 1600 people.

38:16Last night at the high school auditorium in Shoto, Montana, they had a rally home of the bulldogs by the way. They had a rally for New York City and not just a rally for New York City, but a rally to raise money, to raise money for New York City. And if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the spirit of the United States, then I can't help you. I'm sorry. They raised $10,000. The town of 1600 people raised $10,000 for immediate aid for everybody that needed something in New York City. I was moved by that watching it in 2001 on September 17th. I may be even more moved now.