President Donald J. Trump signed an official proclamation in advance of Patriot Day 2018 — which included a statement that “radical Islamist terrorists carried out an unprecedented attack on our homeland.”

The presidential statement honors the memory of the “nearly 3,000 precious lives we lost on September 11, 2001, and of every hero who has given their life since that day to protect our safety and freedom,” according to Trump.

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In the document, he referred to the attackers as “enemies of liberty” and called their acts “evil.”

In contrast to his characterization of the terrorists, he praised American citizens as “a people of an indomitable will” and noted that “our love of country was made manifest through the examples of Americans engaging in countless acts of courage, grit, and selflessness.”

Before the sun rose on the 17th anniversary of the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, President Donald Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, tweeted a photograph of the president signing the proclamation.

The president himself retweeted the photograph early Tuesday morning — appending the hashtags #NeverForget and #September11th.

The retweet had been shared more than 45,000 times within eight hours of its posting.

The response to the proclamation and to the president’s visit to the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, memorial service the same day was deeply critical.

Many were critical of the president’s proclamation tweet.

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Some accused him of lying about Muslims dancing in the streets following 9/11, and others lambasted him for saying his building was the tallest in Manhattan after the twin towers fell.

Some faulted President Trump’s retweeting Scavino — rather than composing an original tweet on the matter of the proclamation.

In a tweet praising Mayor Rudy Giuliani for his “leadership, bravery, and skill” during the September 11 period, President Trump called him a “true warrior.”

The response to the praise for Giuliani met with similar backlash.

Here are other tweets as well.

Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to LifeZette.