Shaquille O’Neal outed himself as a 9/11 truther last night. In doing so, he joins a surprising number of celebrities (Woody Harrelson, Charlie Sheen, Rosie O’Donnell, Janeane Garofalo, and even Mark Ruffalo) who feel the same way. Why O’Neal decided to go public with these beliefs in 2015 shall remain a mystery.
The Shaqtin’ A Fool host presented his conspiracy theory on his own website with a blog entry, which he linked on his Facebook page. Both entries reveal what Shaq believes is the truth. The fine folks at Deadspin predicted that someone would think better of O’Neal’s revelation and yank the content. This is precisely what happened. Luckily, the internet invented screencaps, which include the following text:
Supposedly the materials that the buildings are made of wouldn’t allow a plane to slice through it as cleanly as flight 175 did. The second impossibility is something easily missed, even though you’ve probably seen the replay a million times when it happened. The guy in the video did a screen grab so you can see it perfectly. The way it appeared just wasn’t right.
O’Neal linked to a YouTube video (published in May 2014) that argued 9/11 was an inside job. Slate has since debunked the vid — which is based upon a claim that the second plane never makes impact (though “indisputable evidence of ‘a CGI glitch'”) — as a fraud.
Before the Facebook post came down, commenters had their way with O’Neal. Glenn MacDonald wrote, “Shaq you are nothing but a joke … 9/11 is not a fake so get the hell over yourself!!” Kristin Constantino added, “I’m pretty sure the families are sick to death of all the conspiracy theories as well. So was the 1993 attack an inside job too? Bin Laden kept trying until he succeeded … and that sadly was 9/11.”
