By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
September 9, 2026
Not everything is about him.
That’s the thing—the fundamental truth—that President Donald Trump never has been able to grasp.
His unceasing hunger for attention drives him to do and say offensive things. It’s almost as if he figures that having people furious with him is better than having them ignore him.
The commemoration of Sept. 11 is but the latest illustration.
The four surviving former presidents—Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush, who was commander-in-chief when the terrorist attacks occurred—will attend.
Trump also was invited. But he refused to come unless he was allowed to make a speech, one that was likely to be partisan and self-serving in nature.
The event’s organizers said no.
Now, politicians who reach the presidency are not, by nature, shrinking violets. They like to be center stage with every eye focused on them.
Nor is this a new phenomenon.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth once said of her famous father, President Theodore Roosevelt, that “he wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.”
Still, even TR knew that there were times to rein in his need to hog the spotlight. He knew that there were some events that were larger and more important than even his not-small ego.
Biden, Obama, Clinton and Bush all have been commanding every room they enter for decades. They are used to being the focus of everyone’s attention.
But, come Sept. 11, they will be models of decorum. They will sit as everyone else will, with their heads bowed and their minds locked on all the family members, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens we lost on that awful day 25 years ago.
Because they understand that some things are even bigger and more important than a president.
An entire nation dealing with enduring grief is one of those things.
It will be a moment that brings us together in our sorrow.
But it doesn’t work that way with Donald Trump.
Because he feels he always must stand above or apart from everyone else, he cannot take the comfort the rest of us do in realizing that we are merely part of something larger than ourselves. He cannot draw strength in times of trouble from a sense of belonging to a larger whole.
Even his stories about that horrible day—most of them counter-factual and none of them worth repeating—show how desperate he is to make himself the center of every story.
Even if doing so demeans the people who suffered and died on 9/11.
This is the sad part.
The fact is that all Americans who were alive on Sept. 11, 2001, have their own 9/11 story to tell. Many, perhaps most, of them are prosaic.
They are tales of learning that something awful and almost unimaginable had occurred—and of being touched by that sudden knowledge that previously would have seemed incomprehensible.
Whether we heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon through a television report, over the radio, via a friend or through some other means, there is a nearly universal pattern to our stories.
First, we were stunned. Then we felt tremendous sympathy for those who died and those who loved the fallen.
And then we felt fear and anger, alternating like a pulsing current in our veins.
That is what made 9/11 a massive collective experience for us as a country and a people—that sense that we all had been touched in a similar way and were moving together almost as one entity.
Donald Trump cannot grasp that.
Because he cannot contemplate or accept that there might be something larger or more important than his need for slavish adoration, he cannot understand that there are times that we all just want to be together as one people.
The man who needs to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral and the baby at every christening always wants everything to be all about him.
Even when it shouldn’t be.
Even when it isn’t.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
