An event in Columbia, South Carolina on April 29, 2021 featured Mike Pence, former Vice President. Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Pence launched Friday's first episode of a podcast to commemorate the attacks on 9/11.
He claimed that there have not been major terrorist attacks in the US over the past 20 years four times.
His claim overlooks white supremacist attacks at El Paso Charleston, Pittsburgh, among others.
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Mike Pence claimed that there have not been any major terrorist attacks in 20 years after September 11, 2001. This was despite a string of white supremacist terrorist acts and the persistent violence of jihadism in recent years.
"For the past 20 years, I have marveled about the heroes who have stepped up to defend our country, to bring us a place now," Pence said on the first episode "American Freedom With Mike Pence", a podcast sponsored by conservative Young America's Foundation.
Pence repeated this claim four times in the 48-minute episode. He used it often to justify the War on Terror as well as the expensive invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan that the United States launched in the years after 9/11.
Pence stated, "This country should feel proud of the way we've responded twenty years later."
A string of terrorist attacks by white supremacists has been committed on American soil in recent years. According to intelligence and law enforcement officials from the United States, white supremacists are a greater threat than foreign terrorists.
A gunman killed 23 people in El Paso's Walmart after posting an online manifesto that stated bluntly, "This attack is a reaction to the Hispanic Invasion of Texas."
Robert Bowers, an online scribe who claimed that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (a Jewish nonprofit that aids refugees), "likes to bring in invaders in which kill our people," shot and killed 11 people at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue. I cannot watch my people being slaughtered. Screw your optics. I'm going in.
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Dylann Roof, a South Carolina-based African American pastor, murdered nine people in Charleston, South Carolina. He declared upon his arrest that he wanted a race war to start.
Wade Michael Page, a white supremacist, shot and killed six people in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in 2012. He then turned the gun on himself.
Many people have called the attack on the US Capitol earlier in the year, which resulted in the deaths of five people and injured many others, a terrorist attack. Some protesters wanted to kill Pence.
"A mob consisting of terrorists and extremists launched a violent attack on the people's home, and the sacred ritual that certify free and fair election," stated President Joe Biden during a ceremony that awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to Capitol Police officers in August.
Research by New America found that jihadists killed 107 Americans since 9/11 while far-right extremists killed 114.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss is the director of Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, American University. She wrote that the 9/11 attacks have fuelled right-wing extremism in a Foreign Affairs Op-Ed.
She wrote that the attacks were a gift for peddlers xenophobia, white superioracism and Christian nationalism. "As dark-skinned Muslim foreigners intent on killing Americans, al Qaeda terrorists & their ilk seemed stepped out from a far-right fever nightmare."
A conversation with former Wisconsin Governor was also part of the podcast episode. Scott Walker interviews family members who were affected by 9/11/Iraq War and interviews with two student activists who worked with the Young America's Foundation in college.
What does it mean for you to be here on the 20th anniversary since September 11th? To know that there has been no terrorist attack on American soil over those 20 years and that your father was involved in that? Pence asked Brandi. Anderson's father was killed in a mortar attack at Ramadi in Iraq in 2004.
Pence ignored the rise of right-wing terror and instead focused on terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists. America was attacked twenty years ago. Pence stated at one point that nineteen terrorists from Islam seized control over four commercial airlines.
However, Pence's claim is not valid if it applies only to terrorist acts committed by Islamic extremists.
These attacks continue even after 9/11, with an ISIS-inspired attack on the Pulse nightclub, Orlando, killing 49 people in 2016, a shooting at San Bernardino (California) that killed 14 people in December 2015 and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. In 2009, 13 servicemen were killed in an attack on Fort Hood, Texas.
Updated 9/10/2021 - This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Anderson's father was killed in Ramadi (Iraq), and not Fallujah (Iraq).
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