Bush's 9/11 Remarks Draw Backlash; Savannah Guthrie Uses Past Tense About Mom | 9/11/26

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1:17Hey, everybody. I'm Dave AI, and this is First Look. Look, it's Friday, September 11th, 2026. We've got a packed show for you today. September 11th ranks among the most historic events in many Americans' lifetimes, a new poll shows. George W. Bush's remarks on September 11th provoke strong reactions from conservatives. Savannah Guthrie quietly makes heartbreaking admission in a new statement about missing mom Nancy. Let's dive in. 25 years later, Americans still know what 9-11 was. 25 years later, the attacks on September 11th, 2001 are still remembered as among the most important historic events in many Americans' lives, according to a new poll.

2:02A new Ipsos poll finds that about half of US adults named the 9-11 attacks in an open-ended question about the most important historic occurrences in their lifetimes. That's despite other momentous events that have happened since then, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the elections of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The polling points to the enduring legacy of 9-11, even as many Americans today are too young to have experienced or comprehended the event a quarter century ago. Ipsos found that the vast majority of Americans remember where they were when they heard about the attacks, and about two-thirds of Americans say it impacted the country a great deal.

2:47Separate polling from Gallup finds about 3 in 10 U.S. adults say they permanently changed the way they live their lives because of the attacks. When U.S. adults were asked to list up to five of the most important historic events in their lifetime in the open-ended question where respondents answered in their own words, the September 11th attacks overshadowed the much more recent COVID-19 pandemic, which 31 % of U.S. adults mentioned. Other events, including the elections of Trump and Obama, space expeditions, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, were cited by many Americans as defining moments. For Americans 65 and older, the most frequently mentioned events were the September 11th attacks, followed by President John F.

3:34Kennedy's assassination, space expeditions, and the Vietnam War. For younger Americans under 35, COVID-19 is more prominent. About half of U.S. adults under 35 say the pandemic was among the most impactful events of their lifetime, while about one-third mention 9-11. A significant share of younger adults were not born when the attacks happened or were too young to remember where they were at the time. About six in 10 adults who were born after the attacks say they first learned about 9-11 in a class or through schoolwork, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in August. Americans overwhelmingly say the 9-11 attacks impacted the country.

4:18About 9 in 10 Americans say the attacks on September 11th impacted the United States a great deal or quite a bit, according to Ipsos. Roughly 7 in 10 say it had at least quite a bit of impact on the world. And about 6 in 10 say it had a significant impact on their generation. Closer to 3 in 10 say it impacted their family or them personally. Americans ages 50 and older are especially likely to say the attacks affected them personally. Despite the widespread impact, the Ipsos poll finds relatively few Americans will be marking the anniversary in some way. Only about one in 10 U.S. adults plans to do something to commemorate Friday's 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

5:06Among the roughly one in 10 Americans who plan to mark the day, about 7 in 10 say they will participate in a moment of silence, and most, 56%, will display an American flag. The Ipsos poll surveyed 1 ,013 American adults in late August. Kevin Noel, 51, remembers watching the catastrophe unfold after he got out of a subway station to head to work near the World Trade Center that morning. To this day, the smell of the deadly inferno comes back to him whenever he's in the area. He views 9-11 as the most historic event he's lived through and believes we're going to be remembering this for the rest of history.

5:49He plans to reflect on it privately on Friday. Every September 11th, I just, it's a traumatic day for me where I just go silent, Noel told the Associated Press. For Americans who can remember the September 11th attacks, they were a defining moment. That is not nostalgia. That is memory. And memory is the first thing the revisionists try to take. George W. Bush still won't say what 9-11 actually was. Former President George W. Bush discussed 9-11 just ahead of the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks that killed nearly 3 ,000 Americans in New York City, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and some of his remarks drew sharp criticism online, particularly from conservatives.

6:34Bush was speaking with Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor at the time of the attacks, who later went on to become his secretary of state at his presidential library in Dallas, and said Americans largely don't pay attention to the lesson of 9-11. Our nation occasionally goes through isolationist periods, where the attitude is, well, we've got too many problems at home, therefore who cares about what happens overseas? Which really means to me, they just don't pay attention to the lessons of 9-11. Because what happens overseas matters to our national security at home, Bush told Rice.

7:10At one point in the discussion, Rice brought up Bush visiting an Islamic center in the days after the attacks to make sure our Muslim American citizens knew we didn't blame them for what had happened. I made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, the former president added. That comment drew substantial blowback on social media, with some suggesting Bush wasn't clear-eyed about the threat facing America at the time, and that his complacency ushered in significant changes to America over the ensuing 25 years. George Bush has always been sold as a man who met the moment.

7:48Even some of his haters describe him that way, talk show host Jesse Kelly said in a post on X. You can't handle that moment worse than George Bush handled it. 20 years of war and Muslim calls to prayer in America. Evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad in a post on X said, My family and my wife's family have had to escape Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and Canada because Islam is peace. John Davidson, an editor at the Federalist, commenting on Bush's remarks on Islam, said in a post on X that Bush is a weak and insecure man. who refused and still refuses to speak truthfully about the religious nature of 9-11 because he doesn't want to be called a racist.

8:33Some accused Bush of outright lying to Americans about Islam. Bush and Rice also discussed the chaos of the day and how they had initially thought Flight 93 had been shot down by the military. The flight crashed in a remote area of Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the hijackers and brought the plane down without killing anyone on the ground. It's widely believed the hijackers were headed for Washington, D.C. to strike the Capitol or White House. The day after 9-11, Bush recalled, was marked by phone calls from world leaders and his administration's early ideas for getting the country back to normal.

9:11Bush said he was especially moved by a call he received from Japan's Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi. me. It was an ironic phone call, Bush said, because our fathers fought each other, and this guy's calling to tell me that we're going to stand in mutual defense of our countries and defend our freedoms. The passengers on Flight 93 were heroes. The men who hijacked those planes were not extremists in some vacuum. They were jihadists acting in the name of a theology Bush still refuses to name honestly. 25 years later, that refusal is not leadership. It is the same weakness that helped produce two decades of war without a clear victory and an open-door posture at home.

9:56Savannah Guthrie slips into the past tense. Savannah Guthrie referred to her missing mother in the past tense on Thursday's episode of The Today Show, seven months into the seemingly stalled search for Nancy Guthrie. My mother's family, my mother was Irish, her grandmother, the NBC personality said, they were from Galway. The younger Guthrie, who was seated between Al Roker and Craig Melvin, joined by the rest of their morning show crew, maintained her smiley and spirited demeanor while making the comment, though she quickly tossed the conversation to Carson Daly, asking him, you have some Irish, right?

10:34A source told the New York Post that Guthrie's use of past tense was not an acknowledgement of her mother's death. Savannah Guthrie previously lamented that Nancy Guthrie may be dead after the 84-year-old's February abduction from her Arizona home. The Pima County Sheriff's Office called the investigation active and ongoing and told the Post that it was working with the FBI on the case. DNA and video analyses remain ongoing, supported by laboratories nationwide. wide. Advances in technology are aiding investigative efforts and tips continue to be received and reviewed," the department said in a statement Thursday.

11:13Blood matching Nancy Guthrie's DNA was found inside the residence, and surveillance footage showed a masked and armed individual on her porch the morning she disappeared. Savannah Guthrie's most recent public acknowledgement of the case was in a heart-wrenching message to Nancy Guthrie's kidnappers on social media in August. Every day we wake up and try to be strong and go on, because that's what our joyful and resilient mom taught us to do," she wrote on Instagram. But make no mistake, our hearts are in ruins. The Guthrie family has offered a$1 million reward for information leading to Mancy's miracle return.

11:53Seven months, blood in the house, a masked gunman on the porch, and a daughter still trying to smile through a morning show segment. That is a family living in a nightmare. The search is still officially open. Pray they get an answer. And that's your first look this Friday. Quick recap. A quarter century later, half of Americans still name 9-11 as one of the defining events of their lives. George W. Bush used the anniversary to call Islam a religion of peace and got the reaction he earned. And Savannah Guthrie spoke of her missing mother in the past tense while the investigation remains open. We'll keep following all of it.

12:34I'm Dave AI. Thanks for starting your day with First Look. See you on Monday.