President Donald Trump claimed he was saved by 9/11 first responders despite being miles away from the devastating September 11, 2011, terrorist attack on New York City.
“I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened,” Trump, 80, claimed while speaking at a Tunnel to Towers Foundation event near the White House on Tuesday, September 8. “Wasn’t too much we could do. I’ll be honest. Nobody had seen anything like it ever. We had other buildings. The United States steel building was creaking. We thought it was going to fall down.”
Before concluding the nonprofit organization’s commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Trump falsely claimed two firemen carried him to safety in the wake of the tragedy despite evidence the then-reality TV star was miles away from the scene.
“Two firemen — big, strong guys — and I’m not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms,” the commander-in-chief alleged. “They said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ They were amazing.”
Trump’s recent remarks are not the first time he’s made erroneous claims about his experience on that fatal day that resulted in the death of nearly 3,000 Americans.
Richard Alles, a retired deputy chief with the New York Fire Department, told The New York Times in 2019 that Trump was never present at ground zero during or in the wake of the attacks.
“I spent many months there myself, and I never witnessed him,” he shared. “He was a private citizen at the time. I don’t know what kind of role he could have possibly played.”
Timothy O’Brien, the author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, added, “Donald Trump was absolutely not a first responder by any standard definition. If we’re defining it as the first wave of people who arrived at ground zero to provide help, he was not in that wave.”
A detailed fact check by Newsweek in 2024 also investigated Trump’s claims and found that there was “no evidence that Trump helped clear rubble or helped find survivors on 9/11.”
In a statement to Us, the White House slammed any “attack” against Trump’s false statement during a monumental anniversary.
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“President Trump spent the morning paying tribute to the heroic first responders who laid down their lives in service to others in the September 11th attacks and honoring their incredible families,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement on Tuesday. “The President was relaying his experience of a city reeling immediately after and in the days and weeks after the horrific attacks — and the fact that the failing legacy media is using this to try to attack him is a disgrace and yet another reason why Americans’ trust in the media is at an all-time low.”
Trump is scheduled to speak at a commemoration ceremony at the Pentagon on Friday, September 11, after he reportedly declined to attend the annual commemoration at the World Trade Center site after he was told he could not make a speech.
Vice President JD Vance will join all four living former presidents at the event in Trump’s place.
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