“It’s very close to my heart because I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7/11, down at the World Trade Center right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action,” he said.

Trump’s word choice seemed to be verbal flub rather than a reference to the convenience store chain.

He made the comments at a rally in Buffalo, N.Y., the night before the state’s primary on Tuesday, which he is expected to win.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgUf1mJPqcY]

Trump, a Queens native whose real estate empire is based in Manhattan, has repeatedly invoked the 9/11 attacks while stumping in New York City and elsewhere in the state, time and again commending that day’s first responders. Earlier in the campaign, Trump delivered a rather eloquent defense of New York City and its people after Senator Ted Cruz criticized his “New York values” as “socially liberal” and “pro-abortion” at a debate in January.

“When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York … Thousands of people killed and the cleanup started the next day … I was down there. And I’ve never seen anything like it. And the people in New York fought and fought and fought, and we saw more death and even the smell of death; nobody understood it. And it was with us for months: the smell, the air. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched, and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers, and I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.”

Trump, whose campaign for the Republican nomination is nothing if not unorthodox, has committed verbal mix-ups before. During a speech earlier this year at Liberty University, which is known for its Evangelical student body, Trump pronounced a book of the Bible as “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” And he also cursed twice.