This fact check finds a viral screenshot that supposedly shows Mehdi Hasan posting a 9/11 photo with the caption "Make American planes crash again" is falsified. Hasan did quote-retweet a NewsWire post about a Georgia plane crash on Feb. 16, 2025 and added the caption, but he did not attach any 9/11 imagery. The doctored screenshot used a frame from Kevin Westley’s 9/11 video (2:08) and surfaced on X on Aug. 6, 2026. Hasan deleted his original post the next day and said it was sarcastic and taken out of context.
Fact Check: Viral Screenshot Falsely Shows Mehdi Hasan Posting 9/11 Image — Original Post Did Not Contain 9/11 Photo
Lead Stories says: Not That Image
A widely circulated screenshot claiming Mehdi Hasan posted a September 11 image with the caption "Make American planes crash again." is fabricated. The genuine post by Hasan — a quote-retweet of a NewsWire announcement about a plane crash in Georgia on Feb. 16, 2025 — did include the caption but did not contain any 9/11 imagery.
How The Image Was Altered
The doctored screenshot first appeared in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Aug. 6, 2026. The fake image includes a still from 9/11 footage uploaded to YouTube by Kevin Westley; the selected frame (the moment just before the second plane struck the World Trade Center) occurs at 2:08 in Westley’s video. That 9/11 frame was never attached to Hasan’s original quote-retweet.
Original Post And Timeline
On Feb. 16, 2025, NewsWire posted on X reporting a plane crash in Georgia. Mehdi Hasan quote-retweeted the NewsWire post and added the caption: Make American Planes Crash Again. Hasan deleted that quote-retweet the next day, Feb. 17, 2025 (embeds may show Feb. 17 or Feb. 18 because of time-zone and embed timestamp differences).
Image source: post by @Twolfrecovery on X.
Broader Context
There does not appear to be any direct link between the Georgia crash and the 9/11 footage used in the fabricated screenshot. The Georgia incident happened the same weekend that pressure from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) coincided with the firing of many probationary Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees; the Air Current reported on those firings on Feb. 18, 2025, noting widespread confusion around the abrupt terminations.
Hasan’s Explanation
I deleted this sarcastic quote-tweet because MAGA and Islamophobic folks are clipping it out of context and trying to ridiculously suggest I'm inciting violence. I was obviously mocking the MAGA slogan 'Make America... Again' and highlighting the shocking number of plane crashes under Trump and the FAA cuts. But this tweet was in poor taste, poorly worded, and has allowed people in bad faith to call me a terrorist, with one New York Post reporter cc-ing the FBI. So I deleted it. Meanwhile, the right wants to silence all journalists while crying 'free speech!'
Conclusion
In short: the circulating screenshot is an altered image that falsely attributes a 9/11 photo to Mehdi Hasan’s deleted post. The original post contained only a quote-retweet of NewsWire about a Georgia crash plus Hasan's sarcastic caption; it did not include any September 11 still. The doctored frame was taken from Kevin Westley’s 9/11 footage and added to the fake screenshot after the fact.
Key takeaway: The screenshot is manipulated — Hasan wrote the caption but did not post the 9/11 image.
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