Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cited a Breitbart News article which stated that a WCBS-TV report from 2001, “100% Vindicated” his claim that thousands of American Muslims celebrated after 9/11. But the WCBS-TV report only references eight men detained after beeing seen cheering on a roof in Jersey City.
Breitbart's John Nolte wrote an article on December 2, arguing that a WCBS-TV report from 2001 completely vindicates Trump's claim that he saw thousands of Muslims in America celebrating the 9/11 attacks.
Not only have eyewitnesses and contemporaneous reports proven Donald Trump 100% correct about Muslims celebrating 9/11, a just-uncovered local CBS News (WCBS-TV in New York) report completely vindicates Trump's claim of “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center.
On the December 3 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly challenged Trump's claim explaining that there were a few reports of celebrations in New York and New Jersey, but “you were wrong by saying thousands, but it did happen.” Trump responded by claiming Nolte's article vindicated him and holding up a printout of the Breitbart News article:
But the WCBS-TV report referenced in Breitbart News' article only reported that “police were called to the building by other neighbors and found eight men celebrating.”
There's another apartment building, one that an investigator told me that was swarming with suspects, suspects who I am told were cheering on the roof when they saw the planes slam into the [World] Trade Center. Police were called to the building by other neighbors and found eight men celebrating - six of them tenants in the building.
This type of hyperbole is common in right-wing media. On December 1, MSNBC political correspondent Steve Kornacki debunked a claim made by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani who claimed he remembered a report of a Muslim candy store owner in New York City celebrating the 9/11 attacks. Kornakci investigated the claim finding no reports of a Muslim candy store owner arrested for celebrating the attacks, he did however find a report that showed a Muslim candy store owner was assaulted by men after being asked his religion, concluding the that the incident seemed more like a hate crime than a celebration.