9/11 Families United chair says PGA Tour’s Jay Monahan used 'our pain and our suffering to malign LIV Golf'

9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada on why she finds the PGA Tour merger with LIV Golf offensive to 9/11 families

A day after the PGA Tour announced a landmark merger with LIV Golf, 9/11 Families United Chairperson Terry Strada called out PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan for using their stories "to malign LIV Golf" over its ties to the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) when the rival circuit presented itself as a threat to the Tour.

Strada, whose husband died during the 9/11 attacks, told "America's Newsroom" on Tuesday that she was shocked to learn the news that after more than a year of division, the Tour had announced it was merging into a single entity that would include the Saudi’s PIF and the DP World Tour.

Jay Monahan, Commissioner of the PGA Tour, speaks to the media in a press conference prior to THE PLAYERS Championship on THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass on March 7, 2023 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

"I am so disappointed and this was a real gut punch to wake up yesterday and read these headlines," Strada told host Bill Hemmer. 

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"And I thought ‘Oh my god, the Saudis have infiltrated professional golf just as they infiltrated our airspace on September 11th when they sent their Saudi-paid agents over here to America to create the support network needed for those 19 jihadists to hijack four commercial airplanes, carry out the worst terrorist attack this country has ever witnessed, murdering nearly 3,000 people on American soil and killing my husband and the father of my children."

Strada was specifically critical of Monahan’s about-face after several of his previous comments specifically related