Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
While visiting New York City recently, I saw a man in a wheelchair attempting to cross the street near Penn Station. Between the bag he was holding, a missing foot and a quick signal light, he was challenged. I observed dozens of people flowing around him, presumably not seeing a human in need of assistance. In a neighborly way, I asked if he’d like a push? When he agreed, I handed him my roller luggage and said “If you push this, I’ll push you.” Within seconds, we were across the intersection and I was ready to move on with my day. But the gentleman needed more.
As he got settled on the sidewalk in a spot of sun, he noted that we were outside a diner and he asked me to get him some hot tea. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out a wad of cash and offered to buy me a drink, too. I declined because I just wanted to get on with my day and go to my hotel room. But I agreed to get him two cups of hot tea with lots of sugar. He gave me a $10 bill and I fulfilled his request. And I must admit to some impatience when he wanted me to pour the many sugar packets into his tea for him. Then I noticed his hands were misshapen. All through our interaction, he was speaking (more mumbling, really) and jumping from subject to subject so fast that I stopped trying to keep up. He needed human interaction.
After a few moments, I needed to get on with my day, and I left him chattering on the sidewalk to passersby. I wonder who was the next to stop and help him? And spend a few moments with him, human to human? As humans, we impact one another in trivial and profound ways. It was but a few minutes of my life. A small thing to me.
The encounter left me unsettled, as he needed more than I was willing to offer and I carried guilt, anger, fear and judgment with me for much of the day. I kept returning to: What more could I have done, without disrupting my day? What more should I have done, regardless of the day I had planned?
My conscience is pricked by the number of people who are homeless and traumatized. Our culture has three primary responses to those in need.
- Judgment that they made choices and are personally responsible for their plight.
- Indifference or helplessness in the face of the needs of others; it is easier and better to ignore “them.”
- Compassion and empathy for those in need and harsh judgment on others who do nothing.
I propose we need new thinking; a healthy version of each response listed above.
- Teach critical thinking skills in school and adult education, to help people make better choices and be aware of opportunities to improve their lives.
- Make it profitable for our best and brightest ideas to serve humanity, and create systems in which the vulnerable among us can thrive, instead of exploiting them.
- Set up listening centers, where lonely people can find and talk with each other; foster human interaction. Perhaps a new version of the human library?
The next morning, as I left my hotel to get coffee (at 5:45 a.m.!), a big, young man was haranguing an elderly man for a dollar, while his elderly wife stood by silently; her cell phone pressed to her ear. I didn’t sense any immediate danger and breezed by. Their encounter ended when I was about 20 paces away, and the young man headed in my direction. We never spoke, but I wondered why he chose that couple to panhandle to? And why did he harass them after they said no? This encounter was interesting, but left my conscience unbothered. Maybe after the previous day, I had shifted from compassion to indifference as a survival mechanism to avoid feeling helpless? I’m still pondering this. I also know that had I sensed danger, I would have stopped to help.
Before I left New York, a man opened fire in a subway car in Brooklyn. While my family called to make sure I was safe, no one in Manhattan mentioned it. I noticed more police in the subway stations. I was more aware of people around me, especially on the subway. But no one seemed to think anything of it. Just another day in NYC.
My heart was warmed by the images of people helping each other in Brooklyn. My hope is that we find ways to help each other outside of sudden, tragic incidents. We are at our best when we are healthy in our interdependence.
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.