I can't say I'm surprised, and you probably aren't either. In any case, we shouldn't be. President Donald Trump has never been a symbol of empathy — in fact, his no-tolerance rhetoric might be what won over so many of his supporters and, essentially, what won him the 2016 election. Either way, since becoming president, he's had multiple cases of displaying odd ways of forced empathy towards situations.

This September 11, as we memorialized the 2,996 lives that were lost in the worst terrorist attacks that our country has seen, was no exception.

It started on Twitter — as a majority of Donald Trump's antics do — on the morning of September 11 with a ranting tweet about China and the trade war. While people are supposed to look to the country's leader in a time of tragedy for hope, our leader was speaking of a completely unrelated topic. Priorities, much?

At 6:32 a.m., a picture of him and his wife, Melania, looking out into the distance was tweeted out on the account with the words "We Will Never Forget" across it, followed by the smaller caption of "President Donald J. Trump." Immediately, it struck people the wrong way.

"Should have been your first tweet of the day, Pal!" Jim Martz (@Martzsy) responded.

"Is @realDonaldTrump serious? 9/11 isn't about him," another user, @angelic_arial tweeted. "Why would he put himself and the first lady there? Show respect to those who lost their lives on that horrific day."

Many shared the same distaste over how his brand and the picture of himself and his wife were a poor representation of empathy towards the nation's tragedy. In a time where we, as citizens, are supposed to look to our leader for solace and hope, Donald Trump has, once again, made it about himself.

But that's only the beginning of it. He continued his Twitter spree, tweeting at 8:12 a.m. (as the time the first plane hit the World Trade Center approached), about a Washington Post and ABC News poll that showed Donald Trump behind Joe Biden by 15 points.

"In a hypothetical poll, done by one of the worst pollsters of them all, the Amazon Washington Post/ABC, which predicted I would lose to Crooked Hillary by 15 points (how did that work out?), Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas and virtually all others would beat me in the General Election," he tweeted. "This is a phony suppression poll, meant to build up their Democrat partners. I haven't even started campaigning yet, and am constantly fighting Fake News like Russia, Russia, Russia. Look at North Carolina last night. Dan Bishop, down big in the Polls, WINS. Easier than 2016!"

Following this was Trump's speech at the Pentagon memorial. He began to talk about his own personal experience with 9/11, and while where-were-you-whens are common on 9/11, Trump's extended self-centered anecdote was off-color.

He said, "I vividly remember when I first heard the news. I was sitting at home watching a major business television show. Early that morning Jack Welch, the legendary head of General Electric was about to be interviewed, when all of a sudden, they cut away … It was a boiler fire, but I knew that boilers weren't at the top of a building. It was a kitchen explosion at Windows on the World. ... Nobody knew what happened."

He then mentioned how he "saw a second plane go into the second tower" from his window in New York.

Also mentioned in his speech, and in numerous critiques from people on social media, was his canceled meeting with the Taliban at Camp David, just around the time to commemorate the 18th anniversary of 9/11. He issued threats, saying that "We have hit our enemy harder than they have ever been hurt before and that will continue."

But these threats didn't make people forget about the attempt at generating peace in an effort, most likely attributed to the upcoming election, to display diplomatic abilities just four days before September 11.

Weird? Many people think so.

"No member of the Taliban should set foot there. Ever," tweeted Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger. "Never should leaders of a terrorist organization that hasn't renounced 9/11 and continues in evil be allowed in our great country. NEVER. Full stop."

Another thing that people are refusing to forget on the 18th anniversary of 9/11 are the condemnable ways Donald Trump reacted in the year of 2001. In a telephone interview on September 11, 2001, he made the false and tasteless claim, boasting that, "40 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. And now it's the tallest."

He's also made baseless claims that there were thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the fall of the Twin Towers.

"I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down," he said at a campaign rally. "And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering."

When asked about this statement the next day, he said, "There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down."

Notably, he cited this from an article publicly debunked that had reported how police reports had detailed people partying on rooftops after the tragedy. After Trump had recently used the debunked claim to further his agenda, the author of the original article, Serge Kovaleski, refused to back up Trump's claim. Trump then proceeded to infamously mock Kovaleski's arthrogryposis at his next campaign.

Another questionable claim in Trump's history with 9/11 is the claim he worked on-site with first-responders in the days following the attacks. There is no proof that this is not true, but Richard Alles, who was the New York Fire Department battalion chief during the attack, says that he never saw Trump at ground zero.

Two more instances of tasteless comments on 9/11 include the tweets:

This analysis of Trump's history with 9/11 is not intended to take away from the tragedy of what happened on September 11, 2001. Yet, 18 years later and with an election coming up, it is important to look at how our leaders handle tragedies that hit close to home and define our modern ways of living.