resident Donald Trump, who accused a Muslim lawmaker this week of diminishing 9/11, is wielding a hallowed date that he, himself, has been accused of wrapping in mistruths, self-aggrandizement and Islamophobia.

He’s claimed, impossibly, to have witnessed victims jumping out of the World Trade Center to their deaths from four miles away at Trump Tower. He described helping clear rubble from Ground Zero, though no one can remember him doing so. He boasted the day after the attack that he was temporarily the owner of the tallest building in Manhattan.

And he has spread a lie that across the Hudson River in New Jersey, “thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down,” a baseless tale he relayed to campaign audiences at the same time he was promising to ban all Muslims from entering the country.