ON Tuesday before the anniversary, on the lawns of the White House, the president of the United States told a story about two firemen. They were big men, he said. Donald Trump is not a small man himself. The building beside them had started to creak and they thought it was coming down on top of them. So they grabbed Trump under the arms, lifted him off the ground and whisked him away. He told them he could run himself. They kept going.

The occasion was an event honouring the emergency responders of Sept 11, three days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11. He has told the tale before at a campaign stop in New Hampshire in 2016. What is worth noticing is not the story. It is the direction in which it has been travelling. On the day itself, Trump gave a phone interview to a local station and said he had spoken to someone who saw at least 10 people jump. Two days later, he was near the site, talking to reporters. He had 100 men down there, he said, and another 125 on the way. He was there to spur them on.

That is the earliest version. A man who sent workers.

By November 2015, at a rally in Colu­m­bus, he had watched people jump himself — from a window in his apartment four miles uptown. You cannot see a........

© Dawn