Just hours after a deadly synagogue shooting in Pennsylvania on Friday in which 11 were killed, US President Donald Trump offered a whopping lie to fans as a means of avoiding the cancellation of his evening political rally in Murphysboro, Illinois.
In justifying a Saturday political rally only hours after the deadliest anti-Semitic tragedy in US history, Trump avowed to his audience that, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was open the very next day.
Except that after 9/11, the world's biggest stock exchange — as well as the #2 NASDAQ and the entire global stock exchange network — remained shuttered for an entire week, cautiously opening again only on September 17, 2001.
“With what happened early today, that horrible, horrible attack in Pittsburgh, I was saying maybe I should cancel both this and that,” the US president commented to fans at the carefully staged political rally on Saturday afternoon, according to Slate.com.
“And then I said to myself, I remembered Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy, he headed up the New York Stock Exchange on September 11th, and the New York Stock Exchange was open the following day,” Trump declared, cited by the Washington Post.
But his assertion is not anywhere close to what actually happened.
Not only did the exchange stay closed for an additional six days — the longest time the markets have been shut…