Paterno, a former quarterbacks coach for Penn State University, ran for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 2014 and consults on a variety of issues.
Wednesday morning in Happy Valley, through the open windows of my home office, I heard the chirping of a cardinal at the bird feeder, the voices of children walking to the neighborhood elementary school and the sound of a school bus slowing to a halt. Up and down the street mothers or fathers stood at the bus stop, holding a small child’s hand.
The simple things that happen every day in America are among the best. The excitement that comes with the new hope that rises with each day’s dawn.
But Wednesday morning we woke from another national nightmare, just days after another national nightmare that was just days after another national nightmare. No place is safe from America’s violent terror cycle that strikes homes, schools, stores, movie theaters, street corners and houses of worship.
And each time these mass shootings happen, opposing parties line up and fight with one side obstinately defending the status quo and the other looking to make sense of what happened, trying to lessen the violence in this country. Not much happens.
If we are to become the exceptional nation we claim to be, at some point, when more blood is spilled and more children are lowered into the ground, we have to act to correct a hard truth. From homicides to suicides, in cities and towns all over America, guns take the lives of too many children and adults every day.
The grief becomes frustration, and we are left to ask: “What is the soul of America?”
We are soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy. We are firefighters running into the twin towers on 9/11 to save others. We are the woman in Buffalo shopping every Saturday for food she took to a food pantry for others. We are the countless unseen simple acts of generosity, kindness and courage done for our fellow human beings.
We can proudly put the best of this country against the best of any other country.
But we are also a nation where a heavily armed 18-year-old man can walk into a store or a school holding the too-easily-obtained power to violently end the lives of others. We are a nation where some preach hatred and baseless theories to scare and intimidate people. We are a nation where many feel isolated and alone. We are a nation where charlatans twist religion and yell from the pulpit to cast condemnation on others who do not look or love or worship the way they deem acceptable. We are a nation founded in freedom’s cause that allowed slavery and a constitution that counted some people as fractional human beings.
So, dispense with the lecture about the founders’ infallibility. Like the Bible and nearly every religious text, the Constitution has passages we can pull to justify pretty much anything we want.
It is neither politically expedient nor acceptable to admit that our history and our soul are complex. In fact, some would have us erase our complexities from the history we teach our children. The truth is rarely ever wildly popular among all people. But the fact remains that by the very nature of our humanity, we are imperfect.
Are we so arrogant as to believe that, we, of all people who’ve lived across the ages, somehow we have slipped the bonds of human imperfection that many far wiser could not escape?
If we are honest as Americans, we must accept that part of our soul is violent. Part of us has always believed that might makes right. The source of that might has often been the weaponry of war, weaponry that is readily accessible to the best and worst of us.
At our best, the eloquence and leadership of great leaders repeatedly moved our nation towards a more perfect union. They pointed the way towards our ideals. But to move towards a more perfect union, to solve the violence in America, the bully and the bullet must not be mightier than the voices of millions calling for a more just nation. The money and power of entrenched interests must not destroy the dreams and rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Tuesday in a small corner of Texas, the inalienable human rights and dreams of children still new on their life’s journey were shattered. The best of our soul met the worst of our soul, and the worst marked those families, that community and our nation once again. Sadly, the most basic rights of children and people are taken by violence every day in America.
The time for rhetoric has passed. The time of politicians and lobbyists awash in money staking out intractable and uncompromising extreme positions to remain in power must end. Because, so too, the blood sport of power-play politics is part of our soul.
And sadly, so too are the anguished families waiting late into the night in Uvalde, Texas, clinging to the fading hope that their child would come home. Our soul includes the people who survived that carnage, their lives, minds and dreams forever changed. The most horrific end to a day had come to a place and a day that probably began much like the day of hope right outside my window.
The cries of their pain, the pain of their loss must shake our collective soul. If once again we can ignore the pain of unspeakable loss, what does that say about us?
The hard question persists. Even harder answers must emerge.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.