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Thursday Night Edition of the Mid-Week Crisis with Dan Carroll -- 9/10/26

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On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, Dan looks back at that fateful day and chats with guests in and around the situation a quarter century ago; all while pondering how it still affects us today.

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Thursday Night Edition of the Mid-Week Crisis with Dan Carroll -- 9/10/26

700 WLW On-Demand

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700 WLW On-DemandThursday Night Edition of the Mid-Week Crisis with Dan Carroll -- 9/10/26. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.

If you're bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture. With your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed, I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the survivor files. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stocked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman,

Angela Jaretana, Jeremy Cole, Hank Cash McDonald, and we're the hosts of the artist on artist on artist on artist podcast. The Improvized Character Comedy Podcast were each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on a lowly. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you'll get the elbows here. The eyelashes hit each other. You never seen it least so quiet as when the Pope gets up to ring on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Self-care September is your reminder to slow down, check in with yourself, get off your phone, and maybe ask why am I like this? I'm James Beak, host of the Psychology of Your 20s podcast. And this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming from setting boundaries and navigating friendships to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships, and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions without us even

realizing it aren't driven by what we truly want, but by what will prevent us from feeling lonely or being alone. Listen to the Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, like by a user-writer or so, at least 70% have a phone. I'm Dr. Joy, and this is Therapy for Black Girls. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kids' brain, the group chat, and their friendships, and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this on purpose. That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who study this for living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I put it out on my Twitter feed a little while ago. What this show tonight was going to be all about.

This is my only chance to be on before or after September 11th, and of course today is September 10th. But the entire show is going to be about September 11th, 2001. 25 years. The anniversary is tomorrow. It is now 908 Eastern time. So we are only just under three hours away from that anniversary. Sammy Niger is running the board in the 700W command center. By the way, I'm Dan Carroll. This is the Thursday night edition of the midweek crisis. Sammy, can we hear cut number one, please? We're back at nine o'clock Eastern time on this Tuesday morning, and we're back with dramatic pictures of an accident that has happened just a short time ago. You're looking at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, where just a few minutes ago, we're told that a plane, some reports are that it was a small commuter plane crashed into the upper floors of one of the

twin towers. You can see fire and flames or smoke billowing from that tower. There is a gaping hole on the north side of the building. That's the side you're seeing to the left hand side of your screen right now, and other damage to the west side of that building, which is to the right side of your screen. This of course happened just before the morning commute, before people were heading into their offices, and while I'm sure some people were already at work, immediately their speculation or cause for concern. This is the World Trade Center that was the center of a terrorist bombing some years ago. So the questions have to be asked was this purely an accident, or could this have been an intentional act, but either way, extensive damage has been done to them. So there you hear that was Matt Lauer on NBC. And the morning show there when Matt Lauer was hosting that show. And as I listened to that cut, I can still hear the innocence in his voice, not really realizing what was underway, what we were witnessing at that time. And as I researched

this show tonight, I, you could just see that melt away. The longer it went on, and then of course, when the second plane hit the tower, the other second tower, that is when everything changed. I have an all star lineup of guests tonight, and I am unbelievably proud that I can introduce my first guest tonight. Cheryl Chumley is the online opinion editor at the Washington time. She hosts a podcast. She writes books. She writes columns. And I asked her about a week or so ago, she would join me tonight. And Cheryl Chumley, it is a great honor for me to have you here. I don't know that I've ever heard your story of where you were and what you remember on September 11th, 2001. So if, let's just start there. And I think I'm going to start there with every guest I have on tonight because everyone who was alive during that period of time, I think for members exactly where they were and what was going on.

Hi, Dan. Thanks for having me on. The honor is mine to be with you. And, uh, you know, everybody remembers where they were on September 11th of that day. And I was at home. I had the TV on. I was watching news. And I saw the first plane, right? The news came across about the first plane and probably like everybody else in America. I, you know, I was thinking what happened? What the heck is this something, uh, the plane? How does it get that far off course? And then of course, we all knew in the second one hit. We all knew what was happening. And then it just started chaos and terror because nobody knew what was going on. The airspace who was shut down, uh, news was going nuts. Nobody knew what was going on. And so I just remember my eyes fixed to the TV screen, my, my ears glued to, to the news, trying to, uh, gauge what was happening. What was taking place? And in that, in that clip I played there, you heard Matt Lauer

briefly reference the, the bombing, the terrorist bombing that took place the World Trade Center in 1993. And, and he really, he was, he was hesitant. He, he did not want to, uh, tie. He did, and he, and he, he didn't really, he didn't have a lot of information other than what he was seeing, uh, being piped in to the studio that day. He saw that picture. Uh, I had the initial reports, but really didn't have enough, I think to connect those dots. And so, um, I don't know if you're like me, but you could hear that innocence in his voice and not wanting to escalate this thing, and, and, and being anything more than just a tragic accident. Yeah, he didn't want to create panic, right? And, and really nobody knew, nobody, nobody actually knew at the time that it was tied to terror. And I think he was doing the responsible thing, um, by just keeping as level as he could about doing the reporting. And, you know, if you go back in time to that day, it wasn't just once

everybody realized what was taking place that we were under attack. It was when the towers actually came down again, right? That was, that, I mean, that was almost a horrific as a moment as when the initial attack started. Yeah. When, uh, when you saw that, that, that first tower come down, do you remember what went through your head at that moment? It just, oh my god, that, you know, over and over that, that's all I remember thinking immediately. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I remember distinctly thinking that, that this was part of the victory that the terrorists wanted because at that moment, I realized they had forever changed the skyline of the most famous city in the world, a New York city. And, and I looked at that as saying, I'm thinking this is a huge symbolic victory for the, for the people who, who, who perpetrated this. And, and, and you know, what you just

said, that's why it bothered me in, in the after, of, you know, in the days after and the weeks after when it was decided that we weren't going to rebuild. Because I always thought that the better move for America, the better message to the world would have been to rebuild the towers, only even make them bigger. And I'm glad we have the memorial. That's all good. But, you know, in the days that came after and the weeks that came after, it kind of bothered me that we never rebuilt the, the actual towers. And you see movies from you, you know, when, when you see movies that flash on those on that iconic scene, right? The Twin Towers back in the 80s and 90s and all that. And, and, and now you think, well, that's no more. Those are gone. That's when it still hits home to this day. Yeah. I, I think, I think it really does. How did, how did the world change for you after, after September 11th? And, and, and your own life and, and the work that you were doing and other aspects of your life?

Well, it, it, it, it definitely opened my eyes more to the fact that America was not a, a moon from terror attacks on our own soil. I imagine that people felt the same way after Pearl Harbor, right? You get that, that shock and that wake up call that America is not immune to this. And it was the same, it was the same type of feeling for me after September 11th. And it was also very sobering because I was living in the northern Virginia area. And so when the Pentagon, you remember the gaping hole in the Pentagon and the smoke that went on for days and days and days and they finally covered that hole with a huge American flag. And I remember going out there to, to the scene as close as you can get, cars would park on the highway. There was a little grassy area where they would just pull over on the highway. And people would stand there and reflect and take photos. And I remember going on a, on a beautiful sunny day and, and standing there and, you know,

staring at it and you just reflect on, on the people, the innocence that was lost on that day. Yeah. We have Cheryl Chomley, a generation plus of young people who, who weren't born before that day, who were born after that day. And there was some of them have already graduated college. Many of them are college age right now. Has our education system done them as a service by not spending, I think, very much time on this at all. And I asked that question. It was about a week or so ago I had a, a sound bite from a young lady who was at the, the campus of George Mason University. And she was talking to young people there and asking them what they knew about September 11th and what they knew about that day in 2001 and how much time was spent in their, their formative years coming up before they got to George Mason University. And, and most of them

said, you know, one guy said, me, well, I think we talked about it once in the fifth grade and maybe when I was a sophomore in high school. And for the most part, they pretty much said, you know, what we didn't spend much time on that at all. And I just, that, that, that is something that has bothered me in these past 25 years. I really don't think that we have spent much time telling young people about that day, especially young people who weren't alive when that happened. Well, I agree with you. And, you know, part of the problem was if you remember, go back in time and you remember, Democrats and Republicans came together in the days that followed. But it didn't take long. I mean, it really was days after that the bickering started on Capitol Hill once again. And if you look around the nation and you listen to what people said back then, at first, you know, all the emergency responders were heroes and patriotism was huge in this country.

And then there were Democrats and there were those on the left that started getting tired of hearing all this patriotism. And they got tired of the America first type of narrative that was taking place. And they got tired of hearing all about it. And I think since the Democrats and the unions are the ones that control the school system, that type of attitude seeped into the public school systems. And as the years wore on, 9-11 was slowly pushed to the side. And now what we're seeing as a matter of fact in the public school system and we're facing this in Texas with the school, the school books selection right now in Texas, which picks the school books for all around the nation. We're seeing this watering down of Islam and terrorism and using those terms together, Islamic terrorism and Muslim terrorists. And so, you know, fast forward another decade and it'll be completely different. It'll be even worse than it is now in terms of remembering truthful

history. Yeah. I think about this in my own life. I was born after Pearl Harbor. But I remember learning so much about Pearl Harbor when I was in school. And we talked about it every single year. We talked about it on the anniversary. We talked about it as part of, you know, general history, World War II, all the rest of that. So I think I had a pretty good understanding of Pearl Harbor when I was the same age, you know, when I was in my mid 20s or before my mid 20s that I had, I had all that background. That was just we talked about that every single day in school. And we and we were able to talk about what our relationship was with Japan at that time and how that relationship has evolved over the years. But it just seems like in the educational sense, we shy away from that now in favor of a completely different narrative that just erases this

altogether. And talk about erasing. Look at who is mayor of New York City today and look at who serves as the city attorney, right? And look at what just happened when mayor Mem Donnie signed um, I forget what it was he signed the sir, I think something to do with September 11th. And then he handed the pen to his assistant to hand to the attorney who represented an al-Qaeda operative. So it just you talk about erasing history, right? And it was largely young people who elected in Lon Donnie to office. And it was the whole socialism thing. And I think how does he, are you able to connect those dots of how where we were on September 11th or the day after September 11th 2021 to where we are now politically when you talk about the rise of socialism, the rise of

communism, the red green alliance, you know, the rise of Islam right here in the United States. And not just Moss being built all over the place, but the fact that we have so many in key political positions right now. Well, well, I am able to talk about it because Alan Weston, I have just finished writing a book about that exactly the unholy alliance of Democrats, Marxists and Islamists. And if you look at what's taking place, there's some curious partnerships going on. You wouldn't think that Muslims would unite with the Democrat Party when the Democrat Party wants to elevate the likes of LGBTQ agendas. But if you look at the deeper themes running through both those sort of communities, Democrats and the Muslim community, it's about collectivism and tearing down America. It's about obeying those in charge. So they're quite willing to partner when it comes time to

destroying Western values and the concept of God given individualism. And then after that, they'll begin to fight for their various interests. But right now you're seeing this union, this very curious union of Democrats, which are really to say Marxists with the Islamists in America. It's a really think it is a turning point. And in President Trump, I think to his great credit has been talking about this quite a bit. And of course, he's being maligned for it. If you watch the CNNs and the MSNBCs of the world and the rest of that, it just wanting to pretend as if this is this is no big deal. It's just another political movement. And I guess there are some elements of the Democrat Party that are trying to back off of this a little bit because maybe they're reading the tea leaves and they see that this maybe doesn't have at least in the short term a lot of political

viability for them. They're only backing off so they can get elected again. Right? The only one who really is speaking out from a sane point of view in the Democrat Party right now is Senator Federman. And he's pretty leftist, right? But at least when it comes to anti-Semitism and the socialism that's taken over the Democrat Party, he stands strong for America on that. And he's not willing to just need jerk anything Trump does as evil and fight against it. He recognizes that Trump does actually do some things that are good for America. So the Democrats who are sort of stepping back from socialism and stepping back from supporting radical Islamism and anti-Semitism and pretending like they're not anti-Semites, they're doing it so they can get elected. And then once they're elected or once they're re-elected, they'll go back to their far leftist ways. So tomorrow, when you watch whatever coverage you watch of the 25th anniversary of this,

what do you hope to see? What do you hope is there that is really going to be meaningful to people who are watching it? Well, the 25th is a big one. So I don't think every year we should do a huge event because it's sort of waters down. The Americans don't have that much attention spent in every year to do the same sort of ceremony. So tomorrow's a big one. And I think, with the link with Charlie Kirk and what Charlie Kirk represented, I think the spirit of America. And here we are with the 250th, right? The spirit of America is going to be shining strong tomorrow. So I hope tomorrow's coverage just harps on what is great about America going forward. Well, at the same time, recognizing the sacrifices of really the heroes, the heroes who ran back in the building, putting their own lives in danger, giving up their own lives to sacrifice and save

their brothers and sisters. All right, Cheryl. Charlie, we will leave it there. Again, extremely honored that you would take the time to join us on this night, a special night for me. And thank you so much for everything that you do. And all the time you spent on my show over the years. And God willing, I'll be calling on you again before too long. But Cheryl, thank you. And all the best you and I hope you have a great day tomorrow and in the days ahead. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dan. All right. Cheryl, Charlie, all the best to you. And I can't thank her enough for being here. Our coverage continues. Todd Bansman is going to be here. He had been working for the Center for Immigration Studies. He wrote just not that long ago, wrote a great piece reflecting about the 25 year history of September 11, 2001. So he will be here to talk about that. Recently, he was working for the Trump administration. And now he's with the Heritage Foundation. So he is our next guest as we talk about September 11, 2020, 2001 here on 700 W.

It does not appear that there's any kind of an effort up there. Yeah. Now remember, oh my god. That looks like a second plane. As Justin gets you a plane going, that's that's just exploded. We just saw another plane coming in from the side. You do that. I did that with that. Yes. And that's the second explosion. You can see the plane come in just from the right hand side of the screen. So this looks like it is some sort of a concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center that is underway in downtown New York. We will see that scene again just to make sure we saw what we thought we were going to give you a replay of what we just saw. And I must admit, I thought it was some sort of fire equipment coming in or some sort of observation plane. But it was obviously designed to attack the World Trade Center. We're going to show you that here's a replay of the video tape. In a second, that looks like a good size plane came in and

hit the World Trade Center from the other side. So this is obviously or would seem to be, and again, I'm dealing in speculation, but it would seem like there is a concerted attack against one of the towers of the World Trade Center. And that was the moment. I think that that most of us knew. There might have been some who knew ahead of time. But I think that that moment is the one that erased all about and confirmed what most of us were thinking that this was an attack not just on the World Trade Center, but on the United States of America. That was Charles Gibson, by the way. From ABC News on this special night. I'm joined by Todd Benzman, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation before that he served in the Trump administration as a senior advisor to the US Department of Homeland Security. And before that, he was with another great organization, the Center for Immigration Studies. And I could go on and on talking about his background, but I

want to hear from him. And he's also written a great piece about the 25th anniversary. You can be it can be found in the daily signal. And he talks about Islamist ideology still motivates mass murder and Todd Benzman. It is a great honor to have you on tonight here on 700 WLW. I'd like to be here. Thank you for having me. I'd like to talk about that. Thank you so much for being here. Take me back in your life 25 years to September 11, 2001. What was your day like that day? And what do you remember? I was a reporter for the Dallas Morning News on staff covering the FBI in Dallas when that happened. And of course, American Airlines is headquartered in Dallas. So that immediately sucked me into the vortex of the 9-11 investigation, which a lot of people don't realize. Initially was centered out of Dallas because that's where the planes were from.

So the FBI that I covered was immediately involved in that. And from that point on, I covered terrorism. I was a national security guy, counterterrorism, all of the trials and arrests and immigration court hearings and everything that happened after that. And forever changed my life too. Definitely changed the trajectory of my journalism career. And then later I became an intelligence practitioner in the Texas Department of Public Safety, Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, where I led a team that did counterterrorism for almost 10 years for Texas, for the state of Texas. So I have a little familiarity with this. And most recently, before I joined Heritage, I was stationed in the National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia as part of my appointment. So I write this piece today because

the typical narrative that you're going to hear, you probably have been hearing it all day today on regular television networks and radio and everywhere else, about 9-11 and your teachers and faculty at universities that never includes the why of 9-11. Why did they do it? What was their motivation for doing it? And the reason is because it's become politically unsuitable for young minds, apparently, to know the why. So they lead it out. It's become part of the partisan divide. The liberal, that's Islamophobia if you talk about that. But the why is that needs to be said. And I wrote that and included lots of excerpts from the 9-11 Commission report because that the Commission report is probably the government's seminal history of those attacks.

Everything that went wrong, why they did it, including the Islamist ideology, the theology that drove it. Which is pretty simple. It's a it's a SUNY philosophy as opposed to a Shia part of the divide. Salafi, Salafi, Wahabism to be more specific. It's all outlined in the 9-11 Commission report, which has a vision of the world as a place that needed to be conquered for a caliphate to restore the caliphate that ended in 1928, I believe, 1924 maybe. And in install, a world government under Sharia law, which is this harsh code of living, how to live your lives that's enforced by the sword. So that's their ideology. And the

United States was regarded as a big obstacle to that. And a island of licentiousness and disbelief and unbelief and had to be overflown and taken over in a war. This will supposedly be this war that they were going to start. And that's really the gist of it. There's a lot more than the excerpts of the 9-11 Commission report. But I just felt like we're not going to hear about that anymore. And we have to hear about that. We have to know why they did it in order to forestall the next 9-11 because that ideology, that ideology, is still very much alive wire. It motivates a lot of very recent attacks and plots not only in the United States, but in Europe

everywhere in the world. So that's kind of the gist of the piece. And if you go to the daily signal, you can find the excerpts from 9-11, the number of Commission report, which stands unchallenged, undisputed, to this day. It's a pretty good document for what it was in 2004 when it was released. Yeah, as you were talking about that, and I read your piece a couple of times of since I first asked you to be on this show tonight. And I famously remember Condoleezza Rice boiling all this down. And when she said, you know, at that time, they were on a war footing and we were not. And you know, essentially when she was explaining how they were able to get the drop on us the way they did. Do we have any evidence at all

to suggest that any of that has changed 25 years later? No, it has not. The only thing that has changed really is that we've balanced the scales a little bit by the reorganization of government, of the Homeland Security, the DHS, we created DHS. Lots of legislation, the 2002 Homeland Security Act, 2004 Intelligence Reform and Counterterrorism Act. Lots of different legislation that created what we have now. FBI put joint terrorism, task forces together, and all 56 field offices that were dedicated exclusively to finding people with this theology who looked like they were going to attack. And we got pretty good at it. But I have to say that I feel like because nobody will talk about that cause, the why, anymore. I mean, like pretty much

the whole country won't talk about it. You get called in this Lama Foe. You can talk about a bigot, a racist or something like that, where Muslims who live in the United States who don't subscribe to Salafist Sunni theology like the Somaban Laden and Al-Qaeda and ISIS and the rest of the Blumina don't. It's in their best interest to join the rest of us on this because there's nothing quite as bad for their public relations as with one of these guys. You know, does a vehicle ramming in New Orleans or shoots National Guardsmen in the head and Washington DC while screaming Ottawa Akbar? I mean, there's a lot of Muslims who have vested interest in helping the United States defend against these people.

So anyway, I think we're at September 10 again these days because nobody will talk about this. I mean, I've been watching, I've been reading. It's all about it. The poor Muslims are be shot by white Anglo religious animus or something that they're hated and being attacked all the time because of it. None of which is really true according to FBI hate crimes statistics. Not really a thing. So I would just hope that people take this opportunity to remember the 9-11 Commission report. It's there. It's doing its job. Its job is for times like this to serve as a reminder that I think I might be the only one in the whole country that is even talking about the 9-11 Commission report and all of the things that it said about Islam, that strand of Islam, which it

concluded could not be negotiated with or bargained with. It could only be destroyed. It's literally an existential battle is how they described it. Those authors describe this particular ideology. It's a venal deadly virus in the world and it's still very much here. You know, when I look at things like what's going on in Dearborn, Michigan, when I look at a guy like Mandani who is the mayor of New York City, when I look at Ilhan Omar and the rest of the squad in Congress Rashida Taleeb, when I look at a guy like Abdu'l-Saheed in Michigan. You really see the rise of what has been called the Red Green Alliance. It's socialism, I guess, with Islamism at its core or maybe the other way around,

but somehow they become entwined with each other. As you look at this, how dangerous is this for the United States right now? Well, I mean, about those people, you know, there were visionists, the historic revisionists who in denial deniers about what happened. I mean, it's the equivalent of, you know, they're not going to talk about this. I'll be watching Mandani. I just want to see what they have to say, how they frame 9-11, because I can promise you it's not going to be about their the strand in their religion. And that's a problem because if they're defending and denying and realizing to protect that strand of the religion, that means they're complicit in it. They support that. They're in favor of it. They want it. They don't want anybody to get caught before they do an attack. That's what that tells me. I don't think that's a harsh assessment at all. They're in

favor of it. They want it. And that's just a natural security problem. And it's also, like I said, terrible for their own religion. If they don't buy into the, your son would be in Laudmauk, kind of theology, they should be condemning it. They should have no problem condemning it out loud. Because it's a public relations catastrophe for the religion. Every time they kill a national guardsman screaming out of a aqua or attack a Jewish community in Chicago, like they did 24 months ago, almost screaming out of a aqua with guns blazing up the police. Nobody really, I think in the media, they've got some implicit reporting, and broadcasters as well. Because every time there's one of these places, they try to sandbag it for as long as possible or talk about mental illness or

or whatever, or something, anything but. And a pretzel twist around ever having to say that this is a strand of Islam. That's a real problem. Causing people to commit mass murder. They want to do it. They feel obligated to do it. They feel ordered to do it by God. So why not? Why not? Those guys come out and condemn it. To the very least to show that they're not part of it. Todd Benzman, I've got just about a minute left here. But before I let you go, do you have a sense that that our level as a nation, that our level of vigilance is where it needs to be? I think under Donald Trump admittedly on bias because I just came out of the administration a couple months ago, including the National Counterterrorism Center, which is sort of the heart of all of our intelligence activity with this. And I feel pretty good about it under Trump.

Because remember under Biden, it was, you know, they made a really concerted effort to steer all effort away from attacking the problem at that route. It was all about white supremacy, if you recall. You know, the Islamist threat was always mentioned in the official strategic documents, but under Biden, it was very briefly mentioned. And so there's a real danger about revising and denying what happened. And that's it. They shift resources away from it. And that makes us more vulnerable. So if you remember it, talk about it out loud and demand your Congress people and your leaders appropriate the right resources and attention to that problem. You got to keep the foot on your on the gas pedal constantly with these guys. Constantly we're we're blasting them. And they are constantly plotting, we're breaking up plots.

You never hear about these anymore. They put the press releases out. You don't really hear about it, but they are still trying to get us all the time. So anyway, that's pretty much my message. You know, you have to talk about this, this stuff. And I appreciate you having me on to do that. Well, Todd Benzman, I appreciate you being here and all the times you've been here in the past. And if with your permission, I'll be calling you on you again in the future. But for now, we'll have to leave it there. Todd Benzman, all the best to you, my friend. I appreciate your time and keep up the great work there at the Heritage Foundation. All right. Thank you. I'll be on anytime. Yes, sir. All right. Todd Benzman from the Heritage Foundation. And again, I can't thank him enough for being here. It's 9.56. And we continue with more great guests as we talk about September 11th from now until midnight tonight on the Thursday night edition of the midweek crisis. 700. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived. And I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what

should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart. And these are the survivor files. You just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman, Angel Jaretana, Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald, and we're the hosts of the artists on artists on artists on artists podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast where each week a new panel of artists

discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is foge journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of foge journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So you're so we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too! I'm so sorry. I'm I'm seeing a reading of Sudako in the Thousand Paper Cranes by Auderman Donald at the Wonderland bookstore. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland bookstore yesterday and I heard you know our Jones duo reading of Zero Dark Thirty. No way! Patrick of the last bookstore though, Kim Ketrol is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He, he winks on Halloween. He gets rid of next to the microphone. I hear you get the elbows here, the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween.

Listen to artists on artists on artists on the I heard radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm gonna have to look up this story. Yeah, I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is the Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the I heard radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. See you between the pages. By age, a rabbit or so, at least 70% have a phone. Middle school is a different world than the one we grew up in. I'm Dr. Joy and this is therapy for Black girls. We spent real time on it in our surviving middle school run, bringing in a child psychologist and a psychiatrist who's raising two Black girls of his own to talk about what's really going on with our kids right now. So it's literally physiological and neurological, air psychological chaos happening all this entire job. We got into group chats and gaming, friendship and bullying, and how to tell the difference between healthy monitoring and the kind of surveillance that erodes trust. You're belonging, you could think of belonging as I can be myself and I can still be accepted. And then they're fitting in. Spitting in says I have to change who I am in order to avoid rejection. Then we turn the conversation toward the fathers, sitting down with therapists, cure games on Black fatherhood, and what it means to raise a daughter through this stage. You don't have more shorts so you can't do flips, you have one to dress you up across your legs.

That's the range of this run, from screen time to identity to the fathers doing the work at home. How to get off our device. But the reality is there's a lot of life out there that we don't want you as you're adult in the life to miss out on. This has been our surviving middle school run. Brought to you by the people who's been their careers thinking about exactly this. I'm Dr. Joy. Listen to therapy for Black girls on the iHeartReneo app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Self-Cast of Tempa is here, which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means. Yes, self-care can be a long walk, it can be an everything shower, it can be putting your phone on, do not disturb, but sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable stuff. And understanding your patterns, your boundaries, finally figuring out why you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again. I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the psychology of your 20s podcast, and each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s from relationships and friendships to money, anxiety, confidence,

attachment, just becoming more comfortable with who you are. Unlike the quarter-life crisis which is depicted as the collapse, the quarter-life reinvention is the expansion and the course of something. When we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves, nobody else can take that from you. So this self-care September, don't just take care of yourself, get to know yourself as well. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHot Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Well you all know. Back on the big one, 700 WLW, special night. For me on the Thursday night edition of the midweek crisis, as we are just the hours away from the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001. And I wonder as I was getting ready for the show, I wonder what the main questions I had was I wonder what young people have learned about this. I wonder if they've ever heard the final phone calls and the voicemails that were left behind by

some of the victims. Cut for. Uh, same to my business and everybody. Totally worth doing. I'm going to be able to get somebody up here more completely and go up on the floor and we can't breathe. It's very very very hot. Die or die or die? No no no no no no. I'm gonna die. Let's say your first concert. You do a good job man, you do a good job. I'm so hot. I'm burning up. I'm on United 93 and it's been hijacked by terrorists to say to have a bomb. Hopefully I just wanted to say I love you. And I'm gonna see who's gonna love you and I just want you to tell you that.

I don't know if I'm gonna get it. I love you. I hope I can talk to you soon. Bye. There were any number of local voices that I could have had on the show tonight, but the one voice I knew I wanted to have on tonight was this man, the one time vice mayor of the city of Cincinnati and great guest, a frequent guest on my show and other shows here on 700 WLW and 55 KRC. The one and only Chris Smith, I'm in a Chris Smith, I'm in thank you for taking the time to be with us tonight. Wow. I mean, just listening to those calls just gives you that perspective of what was happening in that moment. I'm a stockbroker and I remember getting to my firm and everybody was around the TV and watching those claims hit the towers.

I've already fled back 25 years. I think about in that moment the heroes, the birth of the heroes in an understanding about firefighters and police officers, but then that individual person who was stepping up, driving that plane into the Pentagon, they know you're not gonna take out another site and we know all of us are gonna perish. But we're gonna stand up to the terrorists and we're gonna pass. But the American flag at that moment was that symbol of all of us, United. Your neighbor was your friend, police officers, firefighters, how are you defining it first responders? We all valid our danger around that 25 years ago. It is so important this moment,

like reflecting back on what you just shared for your listening audience, the humanity of all of that. Real people, real families that were impacted and on September the 11th for them, those who perish for their families, a very different moment for them. A very different moment if they lost their life for an entire family, children, aunts and uncles, grandparents, what is going through their mind for 25 years every anniversary is just extraordinary. I hadn't heard those recordings prior to you playing them. I'm really glad that you played them because of what it does and it really shows you the human part of what was happening in that moment, Dan Care. Well, Chris Miniman and the reason I did that and the question I asked was, I wonder how many young people have heard that recording. I wonder how many young people have seen the video

of people who stepped off, stepped through a window that they had broken out because of the raging inferno that was taking place in the office behind them and deciding to take that step into the abyss, a hundred or more floors up because they, it was either parished by fire or parished, jumping to your death. You recently had a daughter that graduated from high school, a very good high school here in Cincinnati. I wonder how much time in her educational life to this point has been spent talking about what happened on September 11th. Does she know what happened that day and does she know why we were attacked by this by the religion of this death cult that wanted to attack us simply because here in America we

stand for freedom and they cannot abide that. Does she know? I mean, does people do people of her age know what really happened that day? Well, I can say my daughter went to her high school, those kids know, no question she knows. But to answer the question broadly, I don't think broadly kids, young people really know and understand. But what I will say is, it's so sad about it. For me, it's 25 years today. That's why we know they don't know. Because the socialism conversation we're having, the communism conversation, people burning American flags, people not standing for the national anthem or not taking off

their hat at sporting events, that kind of behavior tells us that people don't know and they don't understand the sacrifice, Dan Carroll. And the thought of, I'm not getting into the identity politics, we're still fighting this fight. The fight isn't over. We're in the middle of these fights right now. And how many times has the FBI or the CIA stopped another 9-11 from happening? You and I, I guarantee you of that 25 years, our law enforcement agencies have undermined similar attacks. And we don't know anything about it. We go about our day. And that's the other thing that makes our country so great, you know, that you and I know that that threat that happened

on 9-11 is still significant right now. And somebody is trying to attempt to do that to our country. And so this notion, you know, people say they want to, they want to defund police and they want to reimagine the police department or they don't love our country. Dan Carroll, that part of it, that part of the story today, that is what breaks my heart. Well, Chris, as usual, you're 100% right about that. And I think that is the real tragedy. I don't like to use the word tragedy connected to September 11, 2001. That was a terrorist attack on our country. But the fact that so much of this is lost 25 years later. And the question that I've seen asked so many times in the last, I don't know, three or four weeks,

leading up to this anniversary is, have we forgotten? As Americans, as a country, have we forgotten what those, what those attacks did and what those attacks meant to our country? And have we forgotten to be vigilant in preventing those attacks from happening again? I think we have forgotten. That's the sad part about it. There's no question about it. But you and I who lived through that, we know exactly where we were when it all happened. So you can't, you know, 25 years ago, if you were an American, you remember that day that moment. And I can say with clarity that as a country, we have forgotten it. We're into this identity politics. And when I turn on my TV and I see a young person,

let's say in Seattle or someplace in California or in New York, or I see a mayor who's elected who essentially is holding press conferences in New York City, apologizing for our greatness. That's going on right now. We know that people have forgotten because there's no way that mayor would exist 25 years ago. That mayor would never have been elected, but that mayor couldn't exist under the context that people have forgotten, no way that goes on in New York. So yeah, there's a work, there's a tremendous gap. The great thing about our country, though, and the hope about our country is we always rise to the occasion. So even when we think we're at our lowest moment, Dan Carroll, this country rises. So, you know, sometimes even in my frustration with what I'm hearing,

I already already know this is the greatest country. We will survive what we're seeing happening right now with our young people. And we will rise above it. We always do. That's the greatness of our country. That's where we are. And I believe that people are going to wake up. Black, white, Latino, Asian, whatever those, whatever a person's identity is, how they identify themselves. And at the end of the day, they're going to say, no, we are Americans. We are in the middle of some type of war because there will be unfortunately another war in our lifetime. We're at war, but I mean a war, like the generation, the greatest generation world war two dying off. We know that there will be a birth of that generation that will that will make the right call, be willing to give their life for democracy. That will happen for our country. I believe that much in this country,

250 years that we will do that. There was a poll that was done a couple of weeks ago. And they were asking the question, do we as a country, do we spend too much time talking about September 11th? Do we spend not enough time talking about it or do we spend about the right amount of time? And I was surprised. I think the vast majority said it was about the right amount of time. But I don't think we spend nearly enough time talking about it. No, like, like, like, Dan Carroll, those tapes, the way you started this conversation, absolutely riveting. I mean, it just blew me away hearing those voices of people that knew that they were going to die. It's riveting. And I think as I was, and I knew as I was getting ready for this show, when I,

I saw it, and I, I mean, there's times when I wish I was on television, but I knew even back then, and I still remember as we were coming up on the one-year anniversary of September 11th. And the directive came down at the television station that I was working at that we would not show video of the airplanes impacting the towers. We would not show video of the towers actually coming down. And by no means were we to show one frame of video or a still photo of individuals who leapt and jumped from the tower that day because it was either parish by the raging inferno that was going on behind them or step off the, the broken window. People broke the windows trying to get some fresh air into their office buildings.

And it was either die by fire or die by leaping off the building. And they chose to leap off that building and put yourself in that situation. How do you make that decision? How do you possibly make that decision? And I wonder, again, I wonder if young people have any concept of that? No, they don't. But at the end, I find that hope and that rainbow, as we end our discussion about it, this still remains the greatest country. And you doing shows like this remind us, right, of that sacrifice 25 years ago. And what I hope is tomorrow as that clock goes into 12 midnight that people are respecting those families who lost everything on 9.11 that we never forget them. We never forget every victim, every firefighter, police officers, people who were running into

the flames are running into the smoke while others were running out that we never forget them and that we continue to do what you're doing tonight on this show. And we thank you for doing it, Dan. Well, Chris Medvedin, I hope you stay tuned to the radio after we part company here. I've got a retired New York police officer coming up his name is Zee Carcom. You may have heard of them, but he'll be my guest in the next half hour. So I hope you can stick around for that. And Chris Medvedin, I want to thank you for being here on this special night and lending your voice says, you so often do and we appreciate everything you do, Chris. And I know we'll be talking about you before too long, my friend. Thank you God bless, David. Thank you, Chris. Chris Medvedin. And again, I want to thank him for being here. It is 1025. We'll get to a break. News coming up at the bottom of the hour. But we continue on till midnight tonight talking about September 11, 2001 on 700 WLW. This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center. You can see the

fireman assembled here, the police officers FBI agents and you can see the two towers a huge explosion now waiting to be on all of us. So that was the moment. A pure chaos had a young reporter on the street there. And I don't know which New York news outlet that that young man was working for. But he was only a blocker so away from the tower when the first tower came down. And at that moment, who knows how many individuals lost their lives. Joining us now on

this special night is a man recently retired from the New York police. And it is my great pleasure to welcome in my buddy, Zee Carcom. And Zee, thank you so much for being here. Take me, take me back to where you were on September 11, 25 years ago tomorrow. Oh, man. First of all, Dan, thanks again for having me. I always love coming on your show here. But I think I want to say 23, 24 or so. And I remember I was actually probably younger. But I remember I was working at Starbucks, believe it or not. I was a barista at the time. I never begged you. We got to talk about that sometime. I never begged you as a barista. Yeah, I was there. I was making a lot of say. You've been cappuccino in all of them.

Oh, boy. All right. I had a late night and I got home really late. I was working in Manhattan at the time. I had been in Manhattan, like location of Starbucks. And I remember I got home really late. I was at about three or four o'clock in the morning. And my mom waking me up. And she said, I want to go to work, but I can't because a plane just flew into the tower. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm still asleep because my mother just say a plane just flew into the into the World Trade Center. So I wake up and, yeah, I'm looking at the TV and sure enough, there's smoke coming out of the World Trade Center. I don't know. Wow. And my first thought was someone's getting fired over this because there was a pilot. You know, a pilot must have gotten drunk and, you know, he made a wrong turn somewhere or something happened. And then he hit the, he hit the, you know, you hit the biggest building in New York. And I remember just watching it. And I'm going,

you know, I can't have to fix that back up because, you know, the twin towers are iconic in New York. You can't, you know, who did this? And then the second plane hit, I went, oh, whoa, whoa, no, this is an attack. You know, my, my, my young, uh, 20-year-old is so mine. I said, I said, this is an attack. I said, this, no, this is not good. And, um, I just remember watching it. And my mom, I looked at, I looked at my mom, you know, I was in college at the time. I looked at her, I said, my, don't go to work. Don't go to work. And she agreed. She said, yeah, I'm, I'm staying right here. And it was crazy because, you know, normally she, she would have left by that time to go to work, but, you know, she actually went in late that day. And then this all happened. And if she actually going into work, she, she might have, have gotten caught in that whole thing. Because she worked a couple blocks, you know, block it to away from the towers. But, uh, and I remember watching the buildings coming down. I just remember feeling this sense of

dread for the first time ever in my life, like, all we safe, you know, is like, what's going to happen next? And then I remember they were talking about the Pentagon. And I like, that was a blur because it was just like, you know, what's going to happen now? What's going to happen now? And, uh, it's actually what inspired me to join the police department. You know, I couldn't join, I wanted to join the Marines, but I couldn't because I had childhood asthma. But, uh, I inspired me to go join the police department. I said, I want to do something. I want to do something. I, I, I, I can't just sit here and allow everything to go by. I said, so I have to do something. And so I, I had taken the test for the police department and, uh, I put it off because I wanted to actually go federal. And, uh, it turns out I said, you know what? Let me, let me, I, I'd rather just protect my own neighborhood, my own home and my own state and my own city. And I wound up joining the, uh, the NYPD. And, uh, here I am now. So September 11th had that kind of, uh, effect on your life. And,

and I was, and as you were telling the story, and you, and you answered the question before I asked it, because I was going to ask you if you, uh, if you resolved to do something that day, like so many other people, uh, who were about your age, you know, late teens, early 20s. And they saw what happened that day. And I think the, the next day or a couple of days at Recruiters Office was probably the, the highest amount of people they had coming in. And, uh, young men and women, uh, saying, uh, I, I, I need to answer the call. I need to do something. And, uh, in the, take me back to the days in the aftermath of that when we had, and as they should have been, the firefighters and the, uh, the port authority and, uh, the police and, and all those who, who lost so many of our, we lost so many of our first responders, but not, not just in New York, but across the country, uh, these individuals who were serving in that capacity were being held in, in such

high esteem, something that I had never seen in my lifetime. And, uh, it, it, it is, when I think about it, Zeke, it's just so disappointing. How fast all that went away to, to, to, and you look at the place where we are now, and you have, uh, leftists and other activists out there who are on a regular basis demonstrating against police, politicians who call for defunding police, reimagining law enforcement and all this mumbo jumbo. Um, how, how, how did we cycle through that to my mind is so quickly in your opinion? Unfortunately, Dan, I want to say we forgot when, when we elected Barack Obama to be president, because, uh, he, he, he, very quickly let us all know who he was. And, uh, you know, he, he, he, he really quickly turned the attitude

in this country against police, you know, there was the whole, uh, uh, Cambridge police officer thing where he, he, he admitted he had no idea what happened, you know, he, all his information was second and third hand, but, uh, the first thing he did was, was go against the cops or against the cop in that situation. And, you know, his whole past history, and I say this as someone who was, was foolish enough to vote for him twice, honestly, because at the time I didn't know. But, uh, he, he told us who he was, you know, when you will go back to old interviews, he told us who he was, you know, the whole, whether underground thing, the whole thing with, uh, with, uh, uh, his pastor, you know, the whole thing with, with, you know, all the, all the groups he, he supported and, and was a part of, um, he told us who he was, and in their playbook, uh, they, they say, you know, you want to go against the police, you want to go against law enforcement, you want to go against, uh, you know, the people who are out there, you know, protecting you, and, uh, you know,

if you look at his presidency, it's, it's a whole string of anti-cop rhetoric and anti-cop sentiment and anti-military and anti-establishment, anti-, you know, United States, you know, so, uh, we forgot pretty quickly, you know, I always say, you know, mom Donnie getting here and, and his election, and Bill Han Olmaw and her election, and he resuted to aid her election, it's, it's, it's not, it's not the first step, it's like the six or seven step, you know, and, uh, and this is, this is where we are now, and if you look at the, the Democrats, and now they're embracing this whole socialism thing, you know, they're, they're, they are now officially the party of socialism, and socialism, first thing I tell you, you know, it's, it's born from Marxism, and first thing I tell you is you're either the oppressed or the oppressor, so, you know, you have to work to make yourself be oppressed, you know, you have to convince yourself to be oppressed, that's why someone like Michelle Obama, uh, who, you know, she'll, she'll

tell everybody how oppressed she is, and she lives one of the most privileged lives, out of anyone that, that, that is this, but she'll tell you how oppressed she is, who we click, we'll tell you how oppressed she is, you know, so I always say we, we forgot pretty quickly, we forgot pretty quickly, um, working in the streets of New York and, and having, and protecting people who are directly protesting the police and attacking us and throwing stuff at us and trying to get us fired and trying to take around livelihoods, um, you know, we, we made a promise on September 11, 2001 to never forget, and every year, you show how much we're forgetting more and more and more. Living in, uh, in New York, did, uh, did you lose anybody that day? Someone you knew or someone you, you worked with or someone your family knew? Um, I lost someone who died from complications after 9-11, uh, Sergeant, Sergeant Paul Farah,

who was one of my sergeants and one of my commands. Great guy. Uh, when, when, at the best bosses I've, I've, I've ever had the privilege to work for. He was universally loved, uh, in our command. He was universally respected, uh, when he had cancer. I mean, it was, you know, he caught, he, he developed cancer, 9-11 related cancer. His name was added to the wall of, of 9-11 victims. And, uh, you know, we, we all came together for him, you know, the precinct still takes care of his, his widow, still takes care of his son, his son has special needs, you know, we still, you know, make sure, you know, the family has taken care of and, and we still make sure that they're looked after. But he was a very special guy, just, uh, just a good man, just a whole around good man. And, uh, at his funeral, I've never seen so many cops crying, like, you know, just morning. Just, you know, because our hearts were heavy. You know, he was, he was, he was a good, good man.

And, uh, I don't pretend to speak for his widow. I don't pretend to speak for his family, but, uh, he, he deserves everything. And what he doesn't deserve is, is someone like Zola and Mamdani coming to his memorial to, to, to gloat almost in all of our faces. I've, I've been very vocal online about how Mamdani should not be at the, uh, memorial, 911 memorial tomorrow. Yeah. He's gonna be there. He's gonna, he's gonna let me ask you. Let me ask you about that because there's a petition with over a hundred thousand signatures on it of, I guess, uh, mostly family members and other individuals who do not want Mamdani to be at that, uh, that memorial or any memorial, recognizing, uh, it's not 911, but he has said he will be there. Uh, how, with how much, uh, uh, if play is this story getting in the New York area today? Well, uh, I'm actually in Florida right now. Um, yeah, I keep forgetting, I keep forgetting,

you move, you, you got out of there. Yeah, you mean, yeah, I moved back to America. Yeah. You got out, you got out when the kid was good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They actually, uh, understand what rights and freedoms are here. So, uh, I, you know, it's nice to, nice to finally be back in America. I have vague memories of, of, of living in America. But then, uh, New York turned into the people's Republic of, of New Yorker stand. So, uh, that's, you know, but, uh, um, I mean, I've, I've been keeping up with it on social media. Yeah. And, and, you know, I put a post sale on my social media that no mayor, though, the blasio included, no, no one liked to blow the oil at all, but build the, build the blasio included. No mayor has ever gotten this much of a pushback to say, do not show up. And just the fact that the Democrats are all rallying around him and they're all, so, oh, you can't say that to him, you know, he's, he's the duly elected mayor of New York. He

must be there. He's, you know, they, they've got their talking points. They're gonna, they're gonna circle the lagging around him. He's gonna be there and he's going to sum his noses at all of us and smile and grin and say, you know, he's probably, I'm sure he's at home practicing his sad face. You know, I have to, I have to pretend to be upset, you know, I have to pretend to be somber. But, you know, let's call away this. He's gonna be there. Summing his nose, everybody saying, I'm here. And there's nothing you can do to stop me. Will he say it was a terrorist attack? Will he? He will, he will never put the blame where, where the blame belongs. Exactly. He will never come out and say this attack was done by radical Islamists. And, you know, what, if you look at the left-wining press in the newspaper, they're all saying, you know, they're making it seem like the planes just, just grew wings themselves and flew themselves into the tower. They're not saying it either because if you actually say it was radical, jihadist Islamists, they're, they're, you know, that that somehow is homophobic.

It's not. It's, it's what actually happened that day. And the fact that he cannot come out and just say, yes, you know, the people did this. This was wrong. He's got his cut and paste tweet that he's pasted every year for, for, since I think 2021, where he's, where he, you know, he, he tries to equate the people who, who, who, who murdered that day to what happened, you know, to people who were getting murdered in the Middle East and getting killed in the Middle East. It's not the same thing. It is absolutely not the same thing. So, you know, I keep telling everybody it's not, it's not because he's Muslim. It's not because of his race. It's not because, you know, we, we, it's sour grapes over the election. We don't want him there because he has shown all of us over and over and over again who he is. You know, my grandma used to say when, when people tell you and show you who they are, believe them. And he has told us and shown us over and over again who he is. And you know what? I believe him. All right, Zika, we're out of time, my friend. We're going to have to

leave it right there. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us tonight. Again, congratulations on getting out of New York and enjoying your life in Florida and keep up the great work on all your social media platforms. And God willing, we'll be talking again before too long. Thank you, Zika. I appreciate it. Thank you, Dan. Appreciate your, all right. On this special night, our buddy Z. Carcom, follow him on social media if you get a chance. 1057, little lead for a break here. The last hour is for you. If you've been listening tonight, this is your time to pick up the phone. 513, 7497,000 1 800, the big one. 25 years since September 11, 2001, where were you? What were you doing? How has your life changed? Where are we as a country? Until midnight tonight on 700 W. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring

how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their story is about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with the Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman, Angel Jaretana, Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald, and we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artist Podcasts. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcasts were each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft.

Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is foe journal. I don't know, have you guys heard of foe journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So you're so we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay, a panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako in the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audrement Donald at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14th. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark Thirty. No way! Patrick of the last bookstore though, Kim Kattrol is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on a lowly. It's right up next to the microphone. You get, I hear you get the elbows here, the eyelashes hit each other. You've never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists on the I heard radio app Apple podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts. If you're bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm gonna have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is of Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Buy azer rather than or sell at least 70% have a phone. Middle school is a

different world than the one we grew up in. I'm Dr. Joy and this is therapy for black girls. We spend real time on it in our surviving middle school run. Bringing in a child psychologist and a psychiatrist who's raising two black girls of his own to talk about what's really going on with our kids right now. So it's literally physiological and neurological and psychological chaos happening all this endop. We got into group chats and gaming, friendships and bullying and how to tell the difference between healthy monitoring and the kind of surveillance that erodes trust. There's belonging that you could think of belonging as I can be myself and I can still be accepted and then there's fitting in. fitting in says I have to change who I am in order to avoid rejection. Then we turn the conversation toward the fathers sitting down with therapists caregains on black fatherhood and what it means to raise a daughter through this stage. You don't have more shorts so you can't do flips you have on the dress you have across your legs. That's the range of this run from screen time to identity to the fathers doing the work at home.

You have to get off your device. But the reality is there's a lot of life out there that we don't want you as your adults in their life to miss out on. This has been our surviving middle school run. Brought to you by the people who's been their career thinking about exactly this. I'm Dr. Joy. Listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeartReneo app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Self-Case September is here which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means. Yes, self-care can be a long walk. It can be an everything shower. It can be putting your phone on do not disturb. But sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable stuff and understanding your patterns, your boundaries. Finally figuring out why you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again. I'm Jenna Speg, the host of the psychology of your 20s podcast. And each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s. From relationships and friendships to money, anxiety, confidence, attachment, just becoming more comfortable with who you are. Unlike the quarter life crisis which is depicted as the collapse,

the quarter life reinvention is the expansion and growth of something. When we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves, nobody else can take that from you. So this self-care September don't just take care of yourself, get to know yourself as well. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHot Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Stuff that I found on the internet and I really could have dug a lot deeper. There's so many good documentaries out there. I saw one today that from just from the very beginning, just drew me right in. But one of the things that jumped out to me was a recording from the cockpit

of American Airlines Flight 11. That was the first flight that went into the north tower. And the voice you're going to hear is the terrorist, Muhammad Ata. And well, I'll give you my thoughts on this after we hear it. But, Sammy, let's hear cut number two please. Stay quiet. Everything will be okay. Don't try to make any stupid moves.

So obviously, he was talking with that controller in one of the towers. And what was he doing? He was lying. Isn't this essentially the same thing we hear from from these Islamists today? Isn't it? You know, it don't make any stupid moves. Just be quiet. Everything will be okay. It's perfectly fine. Isn't this what we hear from them and those who support them? Just seems to me that the underlying message there. Really doesn't sound any different. 513749711800 the big one. If you'd like to share any memories where you were, how your life has changed since that day. Let's go to Amelia and say, hey, the Henry Henry, you're on 700 W. I'll be. All right, Henry. I appreciate you calling in tonight.

Yes, sir. I'd like to say, well, blessings to you and your family and the risk of the Americans in this country, but that was a big blow. Now, I was a... I was at the actual, actually, I was in the gym at 5 o'clock in the morning in North West Washington. I watched his unfold right in front of the face. You were in the gym, you were in the, so you were in the state of Washington? Yes, sir. I was facing there. I was facing there. I was over there for 20 years. So, in watching that unfold, now, I'm just going to ask you never real quick. I was like, ah, two tours of Iraq, one to North Korea,

after the military in the gym and watched it unfold. What branch of the service? Not a face, maybe. What was specials? And so, you knew right then that your life was going to change. Everything changed. I mean, right that moment, everything was going to change. Everything that we knew. Now, my research told me, because the numbers don't, I don't know, it's all intense. Seeing you all the way back to Pearl Harbor, to current state, to do the math. Now, I don't know how many people will realize the numbers on both sides. But American muscle is always taking to the full. There was a congressional meeting.

There was, from what out of stands, everybody included in the conversation whether to mute or not. So, the names of beings and treatments of dollars are spent versus well, these are the best things. There's human life, there's human life. So, you always preserve that best chance. You have to, no matter what. So, the trends and beings are incredible. You can't replace human life. Henry, I appreciate your service. And I thank you for your phone call tonight and job blessing. Job bless. Thank you very much. Henry and Amelia. Raphael's on the line from Bond Hill. Raphael, what do you got tonight? Well, yeah, you know, it just, you know, 25 years. And it just seems like that that's something that

for me personally, it just never leaves you. It's like that I can only compare. Are you old? Are you old enough? Are you more than 25 years old? Yeah, man. Okay. Yeah, you sound like a young guy, but take me back to where you were that day. And what you remember about that day. Yeah. Man, I'm just getting, you know, just trying to talk about it is kind of tough, you know. So, on that morning, I was at the Kruger in Hartwell right there on Vine Street. And I'm just going to be where it is. Coming out of the parking lot, you know. And I'm sorry, out of the store. And I just got in the car and had a little pint of milk and, you know, don't know from Kruger's bakery. And from there, I was going to head off to work.

And at the time, Dan, I was a talk show host over at the bus at the time. And so, from Kruger, I was going to head over to the bus. And so, get in the car. You got it on 700, of course. And the news is on. And so, I hear that in New York City, there seems to be some type of incident, maybe a plane is crashed into one of the world's great center towers. Now, I don't even drive off now, Dan, because I got the car, you know, I just already turned the emissional. But I don't even drive off, because I'm like, you know, this weird

feeling had just waded me in them. Maybe a plane has hit the world trade. So, I'm sitting there for the next few minutes. And all these like little news reports are coming in, maybe from the today's show. I hear Katie Kerricks voice and, you know, a couple of maybe Matt Lauer. And now, I'm just like, if something's going on here. So, now I start driving up to, you know, Avandale, the formerly WCI in bus station. And more and more, you know, reports and info and things like that. You're hearing descriptions like there's, you know, so much smoke and we can see flames and everything. I'm like, that ain't no little set. And so, now I get out of the car up at the parking lot of the radio station. You got to go in and, you know, sit behind the microphone, but before going in, where was Lincoln? Where?

He had, he was not there at the time because he was kind of like, you know, in limbo, you know, semi-retirement, contract dispute, whatever. Seems like he's always there. Yeah. But Mr. Thomas, who was the owner, the then owner, he called us into the office and everything. And he, you know, he saw him burn everything like that. And he said, this isn't good. And he said, it's going to be a tough morning. And because by then, I already know just like, no, this is, this is purposeful. This is a terrorist attack, you know. So then, by the time we took the air, got on the air. Oh, yeah, it came out and there were images and witnesses that had seen, you know, passenger jetliners that had, uh, absolutely into the towers. And that was it, man. And I was, it was tough. It was tough. Raphael, I don't know if you heard earlier, but I had Christian,

Christian, I've been on and I'll always be here. Oh, ask you the same question. I asked him, uh, 25 years as a country, have we forgotten, have we forgotten what, what happened that day? And why, why we were attacked. Do we spend, do we spend enough time talking about what happened that day? And do, do the young, the young people that you know, do they know enough about what happened that day? Now, because we're old enough, uh, Christmas, I'm in and, you know, others, you know, everybody's around, uh, for the most part, you know, at WWW, and we know some are unfortunate no longer there. But, um, I do think, then, that, um, the younger demographics in the United States, um, whether was, you know, passing on through there from their parents or uncles,

great uncles, this or that or what have you. And then even in the school systems, I still think the school systems definitely bring it about. But I think it does not resonate with those who weren't born yet. Uh, and those who were born, you know, the year or two after, you know, um, it doesn't resonate with them. Um, for us, and those older than us, you know, um, it's never going to leave. You know, it's just, I would say it's similar than to those like, you know, my father and mother there to see now, but you know, they were, it was Pearl Harbor for them, you know. And, and I just think that, uh, as far as it being taught, um, and I can only bring, uh, up my, uh, Jewish brothers and sisters. And, you know, I, the ones I've talked to over the years, they, they don't own a daily great basis, bring up the Holocaust. But when it comes up by one of their loved ones, birthdays,

or, you know, that was my, uh, uh, parents wedding day and they, you know, they, they were killed in the Holocaust. Yeah, it's going to come up then, but it never leaves them. Whereas they don't have to talk about a gallon, whatever, because it's just too painful. It's too disturbing. I mean, well, I can't argue with that. It is painful. Um, but, uh, I think the, the effects, we're not going to forget, Dan. We're not going to get it. I hope, I hope, I hope we, I hope you're, a Raphael. I hope you write about that. Yeah. It's just, it's just, it's too horrific of a terrible terrorist attack. You just can't, but that's what it, but that's my question. I mean, do, do the, do the young people today? Do they know how horrific it really was? Do they know? Do they know about the people who jumped to their death? I will say that I do, that, uh, you know, step, step off that ledge and then face the inferno that was raging beyond. Mm hmm. I think that, uh, the younger demographic

that, um, uh, you know, wasn't born yet and come to, you know, learn about the September 11th and endows were born a few years later. I think the, there's a, um, a small percentage that is taking upon themselves, uh, as far as, you know, United States history, American history, world history, where they're taking upon themselves, either from school or from, uh, family members who have told them about it, just like my parents, you know, told me about Pearl Harbor. And then I got more information from school, you know, but, um, I, I do think there's a small percentage that have taken upon themselves to, uh, delve deeper, um, uh, for, from their, for their own historical gathering and to, um, you know, really just see how much, uh, of a tragic event that was. All right, Raphael, we're gonna have to leave it there, my friend. I appreciate you picking up the phone tonight. All the best to you. And we'll talk again. I'm sure you'll call in brother.

All right. Have a great night. Raphael from Bonyl. And with that, we got to get to a break. Five one three seven four nine seven thousand one eight hundred. The big one until midnight tonight on 700 WLW. The two towers are, um, home at least during the day to upwards of 50,000 workers in the 90s, 20 floors. Right. Um, I am reminded of a couple of things that happened recently, Dr. Gross. Not long ago, uh, just a couple of within the last couple of weeks, in fact, there was a pilot who flew. There was another one. We just saw, we just saw another one. We just saw another one apparently go. Another plane just flew into the second tower. This raises, this has to be deliberate folks. Well, that would begin to say that. Yeah, we just saw on live television as a second plane flew into the second tower of the World

Trade Center. Now given what has been going on around the world, um, some of the some of the key suspects come to mind or some have been laden. Who knows, who knows what? That's how it's sounded on Fox News. The morning of September 11, 2001. As I was getting ready for the this show tonight, I came across a story that I had not seen before. And it's a story about a guy named Rick Restcora. He was born in England, 1939. Restcora was served with the British Army in Cyprus and in Northern Rhodesia. In 1963, he came to the United States and joined the US Army. After graduating from officer candidate school, he fought in Vietnam as a second lieutenant with the second battalion, seventh cavalry from 1965 to 1966.

The following year, he became an American citizen. When the World Trade Center was attacked in 1993, Restcora was the vice president for corporate security at Dean Witter Morgan Stanley. And he led the companies evacuation that day. But Restcora was convinced then and remain convinced that someday the terrorists would return. So the security chief walked the towers, studied the site, and reached a conclusion that most people preferred not to hear. The World Trade Center was still a target, he said. And he said next time, it would not be a truck, it would be an airplane. That was his prediction in 1993. The executives listened and then they looked at the lease. Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant in the complex. 22 floors of the South Tower, thousands of brokers,

a trading infrastructure that could not be packed up in a boxes and wheeled across the Hudson. They literally made it a trading center. The contract with the port authority ran until 2006. Walking away from premium Manhattan space, that scale would have meant penalties measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. Plus the operational chaos of relocating and entire downtown machines. So the company stayed and Restcora had adjusted. If they could not leave the building, they would learn to escape it. So we built a protocol and treated it like doctrine. Unannounced drills, no exemptions, brokers who build by the minute were pulled off their desks and sent into the stairwells, two by two, starting from the top floors, leaving a lane for firefighters coming the other way. People complained, but he didn't care. Practice, he believed,

was the only thing that would be panic. Then came the morning of September 11th, 2021. American Airlines flight 11 hit the North Tower. From the 44th floor in the South Tower, Rescora could see the fire. The port authority came over the speakers, saying the south tower was secure in the state's desks. But Rescora went against the port authority and he called for everyone to start evacuating. He personally ordered the evacuation of his 2,700 employees. Rescora grabbed a bullhorn, started the drill. His people already knew it by heart. Floor by floor, 2 by 2 down the stairs. He sang as he moved, cornered songs from childhood,

and God bless America. Keeping the line moving, refusing to let the stairwell become a stampede. 17 minutes later, the second plane struck the south tower. But by then, most of the Morgan Stanley people were already on the way out. Of the 2,687 employees in the building that morning, all but 13 survived. Rescora could have been outside with them, but he went back into the building. Colleagues told him to leave and he said, well, he would leave. As soon as he was sure that no one was left behind. He was last seeing around the 10th floor heading higher. The south tower fell at 9.59 am. They never found his body.

Rick Rescora was 62 years old and an absolute hero. He knew the terror was what would come again and he prepared. And he saved over 2,000 lives by doing that. I had never heard that story before. Earlier this week. And I wanted to share it tonight. Stephen in the middle of town. Let's go on, Stephen. Stephen, thank you for keeping the memory going. You talked about it a little bit. Thanks for doing this topic and keeping making sure that we were still remembering. Well, thank you for listening. I appreciate it. So that morning, I was about, I think it was about a year and a half,

two years out of high school and I was working outdoor job with a buddy from my school and the northern guy. And I'm not sure how we heard about it because we were outside. We were actually doing like true work. Like from a tree set tree down. So I don't even know how we got word that that the planes hit the tower. And as your previous call had mentioned, he mentioned some about like a system. If I remember correctly, I don't know if it was six months previous, a couple years previous. There was like a system that it crashed into the White House lawn. And so I was thinking, oh, that's just another, you know, an accident or something like that. It's a small plane then. Yeah. So put that in, of course, you hear the second plane here, but the second plane and the second tower. And you know, okay, well, this is obviously not something like that. I had been, I had already been signed up to to go to boot camp, a few months prior. I was actually just to go to boot camp right about two weeks after

9-11. And so we pretty much, we finished our day of work. We talked all day about it. You're going to work, buddy. And worked all day. Didn't really get much of the update throughout the day. Got home in the evening, probably five o'clock or something like that. And I set down the couch pretty much watch the ski ski for the next few hours, seeing, you know, all the detail of what would have happened with Pentagon, Pennsylvania, the crash there and all that. So that was that was my experience the day. So you've already signed up what branch of the service? Marine Corps. Marine Corps. Separate five, brother. I appreciate your phone call tonight. All right. Thanks for having me. There you go. Steven in in Middletown. Let's go to Cincinnati and say hey to Tim. Tim, you're on 700 W-R-W-A-W. Hey, Dan. Thanks for taking my call. First off, yes, sir. I just want to say thank you for not letting people forget.

And to answer your question, absolutely, the younger generation has definitely forgotten. They didn't live it. I am a deputy sheriff in Hampton County. Been there for 28 years. I was working in the jail at the time, second shift. And my buddy that was living with, he woke me with the news. We turned the news on. We actually saw the second plane go into the tower. And I mean, my eyes were the biggest silver dollars. And you just couldn't imagine that somebody would try to attack the United States at that time. Aftermath was you saw best friends go to war and they were killed in war. And you had the DHS and you had GSA. And everything was created for after that happened.

Transportation, travel, everything stopped. Everything changed. We have so many restrictions for travel nowadays due to everything that happened after 9-11. We had so much, I mean, as I said, life changed after that. And when you hear a presence say that we're going to war, it means it's a totally different meaning. When you have a child that's in the military and you hear a presence say, we're going to war, your heart stinks into your stomach. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I never got to serve. I never had the opportunity. But everything that I've endured and come across in my 20 years with the sheriff's office,

it's just been phenomenal that changes ever since 9-11. Well, Tim, I appreciate your service in the sheriff's department. And I thank you for that. And I got to get to a couple other calls. But thank you so much for checking in tonight. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Dan. Thank you, Tim. I'll be going. All the best to you. And let's go, Ken and Mason. Ken and Mason, we'll close it out with you tonight. We got about three minutes left. First of all, thank you for bringing all this information out. I wanted to tie in the midterm elections that are coming up. It all works hand in hand with 9-11. We have people like Toledo, Rashid, Belano, Mar, who have never, never apologized for anything. That was caused in 2009 and 1977 people to die that day in New York City. You know, and these people hate America.

And this is an ongoing thing and people have to wake up. This is an election about integrity. It's about moral clarity that we need to save the United States. This is all part of it. You know, people need to understand what happened 25 years ago is one of the biggest tragedies of all time along with Pearl Harbor to America. And these people aren't stopping. You know, everywhere you look, there's more, you know, NDSA people trying to run for election and win. These people want to destroy America. They hate America. People need to understand that. These people hate America. It's never stopped. You know, this is something we've got to wake up to and we've got to have moral clarity as we come to these midterms. They're sure that we need, we're, it's about saving America. It's not only electing Republicans to office, but it's about saving America. Well, I think we've gone pretty far down this. I don't know how much farther down this road,

we can go. It, everything you just laid out and the rise of the, the, the, the, the red and green alliance, which is the socialist communist Democrat party aligned with the, with the radical Islam. And it is, it is, there's nothing American or democratic about it. And if it goes much further, it could, I think it's going to spell the end of our country. I agree with you 100%, Dan. And that's, you know, I pray every, every night, every morning that the American citizens wake up that the young Americans wake up. This is an election about saving our way of life. These people want to end our way of life. When they talk about Medicare of all, Medicare for all ends up being Medicare for no one. You know, people need to understand 5 million Canadians come across the American border every month for medical care because they can't get it

in Canada. That's 65,000 people die every year waiting for medical care in Canada. People understand socialized medicine is a disaster. It is. And with that, Ken, I'm going to have to let you go because we are out of time. Thank you. As always for, for listening and picking up the phone. And that's it for me. Thank you so much for listening tonight on this special night. Special day of programming tomorrow here on 700 WLW. And I invite you to stay tuned for that. And if you have a young person at home, have them listen to it as well if you possibly can. But I got to go Kevin Gordon's up next with ATN. We'll see you next time here on the home of the Reds 700 WLW. If you're bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators and plenty of over thought opinions. Listen to pro society on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breikman, Angel Jaretana, Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald, and we're the hosts of the artists on artists on artists on artists podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants and we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the pope dress up? He winks on the low end. It's right up next to the microphone. You get up. I hear you get the elbows here. The eyelashes hit each other. You never seen

Italy so quiet as when the pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists every Thursday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Self-cars September is your reminder to slow down, check in with yourself, get off your phone and maybe ask why am I like this? I'm james back host of the psychology of your 20s podcast and this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming from setting boundaries and navigating friendships to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions without us even realizing it aren't driven by what we truly want but by what will prevent us from feeling lonely or being alone. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So like by azer rather than or so at least 70% have a phone. I'm dr. Joy and this is therapy for black girls.

We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kids brain, the group chat and their friendships and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologist and psychiatrists who study this for a living. Listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

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