For years, Ari Fleischer has recognized the anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks on Twitter by sharing his minute-by-minute recollection of the day, but announced this year he would be retiring his tweeted commemorations — just a few months after he was hired as a consultant by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour.
As the White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, Fleischer had a front row seat to history on that tragic day. Twitter didn’t launch until 2006, and Fleischer signed up his @AriFleischer account in 2009. He regularly shared his memories on the 9/11 anniversary, such as this tweet from 2011:
At some point — media reports vary but it seems to have started in 2013 or 2014 — Fleischer started an annual tradition of sharing a minute-by-minute chain of tweets covering his experiences that day, including photos and quotes from the president and other government officials, all drawn from his notes and conversations with other Bush White House staffers.
The tweets would go viral and get a lot of media coverage. As a sampling, NBC News covered it in 2014 (“Ari Fleischer Live-Tweets 9/11 Experience 13 Years Later“), the Washington Post in 2015 (“Ari Fleischer tweets what 9/11 was like behind-the-scenes“), Business Insider in 2016 (“Former White House official tweets gripping play-by-play of what it was like to be with Bush on 9/11“), and Huffington Post in 2017 (“Ari Fleischer Tweets His Gripping Eyewitness Account Of 9/11 Attacks“).
Twitter users were skeptical of Fleischer’s explanation, with the majority of replies pointing out his new gig as a communications consultant for LIV Golf, the controversial Saudi-backed competitor to the PGA that has drawn criticism for its ties to a regime blamed for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — not to mention the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
(Excerpt) Rea more in: Mediaite