Joe Biden and Mike Pence appeared together at the World Trade Center ‘Ground Zero’ site….
Donald Trump went to Pennsylvania….
Biden nonetheless found ways to make his point — that institutions like Congress and NATO are bulwarks against such assaults on democracy. “I refuse to be part of letting these bastards win,” Biden said that day.
Hundreds of miles to the north — and four miles from Ground Zero — Donald Trump was sitting in a tower bearing his name, watching CNBC and preparing to call a local TV station to offer his own commentary, including a lament that the stock market was forced to close.
Nineteen years later, Trump and Biden are their respective party’s presidential candidates, and both will visit Shanksville, Pa., on Friday, the place where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field. It will bring the two candidates to the same place on the same day, a rare occurrence, and it comes less than three weeks before they face off in their first debate.
The Sept. 11 attacks targeted the cities that molded the two men, Washington and New York, reinforcing the clashing worldviews they now offer the American electorate: Biden’s embrace of U.S. institutions and global alliances, Trump’s distrust of foreigners and insistence that America must go it alone….