Perhaps the saddest aspect of Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House has been his inability to carry out the most basic civic duties demanded of U.S. presidents: celebrating heroes, commemorating tragedies or expressing sorrow, hosting sports champions or attending funerals. Trump has struggled in particular with September 11, modern America’s most hallowed moment of national remembrance. Hours after the Twin Towers fell, he couldn’t help but boast, during an interview with a New Jersey TV network, that his own Financial District property was now the tallest in the neighborhood. “Forty Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest—and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest,” Trump told the anchors of WWOR. “And now it’s the tallest.” On September 11, 2013, the real-estate developer was criticized again after he commemorated the day by extending his “best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date.”

Five years later, and despite the gravity of his new position, Trump’s loathing of “haters and losers” continues to supersede the unity of 9/11. Awaking on Tuesday morning, the 17th anniversary of the attacks, the first thing Trump did was send a tweet attacking members of the Department of Justice and the F.B.I., suggesting that they had colluded with “Foreign spies & Russians.”

It’s a testament to how much Trump has transformed American politics that the sitting president of the United States would criticize law enforcement on the day marking the death of some 3,000 people—as well as the thousands of service members killed in action in the two wars that followed. The immediate backlash online must have been noted in the White House—minutes later, Trump offered a somewhat more appropriate remembrance by re-tweeting his social-media director’s tweet of Trump signing a proclamation to commemorate the day, adding the somber, heartfelt “#NeverForget #September11th.” Seven minutes later, however, Trump turned back his real passion: bashing his perceived enemies and, in a grotesque flourish, using the 9/11 attacks to bolster the credibility of his personal lawyer in the Russia investigation.

Trump could never refrain from using the attacks as a way to elevate himself, even in ways that had no grounding in facts: he once bragged that he’d predicted the attacks and the outcome of the Iraq War, inexplicably claimed that he could see people jumping from the towers from his Midtown apartment four miles away, and made a series of unsubstantiated claims about his personal involvement with the victims and the recovery effort. (His reported only donation to any 9/11 charities or rescue efforts was a $1,000 gift to a Scientology initiative intended to treat firefighters suffering respiratory ailments with a “purification rundown,” though the Trump Organization disputes this report.) And, of course, during the campaign Trump stoked his voters’ anger by claiming that he witnessed thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrate the attacks that day.

As ever, the White House is trying to keep Trump in semi-presidential mode for at least part of the day, arranging for him to attend a memorial of the Flight 93 victims in Pennsylvania. A photograph capturing his arrival in Johnstown, however, suggests the solemnity of the day still eludes him.

At the very least, Trump knows how much time has passed since the 9/11 attacks: 17 years.