After being blocked from the Senate on Sept. 11, 2021, Joe Biden went on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' and delivered a message. “This initially is a time to mourn—it’s not a time to be afraid. And this is a time for us to not precipitously react,' he said.
wenty years ago tomorrow, as smoke from the Pentagon rose into the sky across the Potomac, Joe Biden was squaring off with security on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
“I was shuttling back and forth between floors, trying to persuade anyone who would listen that we should get back in session and show the American people we were taking care of business,” Biden later recalled in his 2007 memoir“It was really, really important to him that the world see that our government didn’t shut down and the Capitol Police were like, ‘No, we’re shut down,’” the former staffer told The Daily Beast.
Biden’s attempt to calm a terrified nation was not exhaustively documented at the time. Despite what he later called “a moment of almost total silence” from elected officials on the day of the attacks, national political leaders soon returned to the stage to reassure the public or make the case for war.
But when he left the train station that Tuesday for the quick three-block walk to the Russell Senate Office Building, Biden was one of the only people in sight who was not quickly losing composure. Biden couldn’t have known that when he attempted to get into the building, but in hindsight, staffers recognized his attempt to speak from an empty Senate chamber was enormously risky.the smoke coming up from the Pentagon, and we had no idea how many more planes there were,” one former legislative aide said. “He had to have known that the Capitol was the most dangerous building in the world to be inside, at that point.
Holding stacks of boxes of pizza from Gerardo’s, a longtime favorite spot, Biden gathered the office in a circle and urged them to keep working on behalf of the people of Delaware, and the people of the United States. A few members of Biden’s staff began brainstorming the proper platform for a version of the remarks that they had found so inspiring in the hours after the attacks that had left many of them deeply unsettled—both about the nation’s security and their own. Some floated an address at the Council on Foreign Relations or at the National Press Club, regular spots on the speaking circuit for committee chairmen.
was then broadcast daily to 134 countries around the world—she had the opportunity to spread the message that there was nothing that the United States couldn’t do when its people came together.Fifteen minutes later, Winfrey’s staff called back and asked Biden to deliver that message on her next episode.returned with a lengthy slate of 9/11 coverage, from interviews with family members of victims to panel discussions with Muslim women about threats they now faced in the wake of the attacks.
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