On Tuesday, at an event honoring 9/11 first responders, President Donald Trump told a story about being picked up off the ground and carried away by two firemen after the terrorist attack 25 years ago.
“For nine months, rescue and recovery crews worked day and night on the site. I want to just thank my people; I took a lot of my me(n) — I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened. And they were — they had no hesitation — everybody went down with me. We went down, it was a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest — it was, you know, it was raw, and nobody’s seen anything like it, ever.
We had other buildings; the United States Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down; the truth is it creaked a lot, it creaked. It still creaks. But it never came down, and I re(member) — I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen — big, strong guys — and I’m not the smallest guy in the world — they grabbed me under the arms, said, ‘Gotta 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.’ But they were amazing, but they thought it was coming down; it didn’t come down. US Steel.”
One Liberty Plaza — formerly known as the U.S. Steel Building — is located at 165 Broadway, across from the site of where the Twin Towers once stood. It reopened about a month and a half after the attack, after its owner Brookfield Properties announced that a preliminary review by independent structural engineers had found no damage to the building’s structure. Aside from some damage to the building’s facade (they replaced hundreds of windows on the west side of the building), it was completely fine. Trump’s claim that “it still creaks” is odd, as people have been going to work in the building every weekday for the past 25 years without incident.
CNN’s Daniel Dale fact checked Trump’s claim, finding there to be “no basis“ for it. No, Trump wasn’t close to the World Trade Center on the day of the attack. No, there’s no evidence that Trump was in the U.S. Steel Building in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, either. While there was some initial worry that the U.S. Steel Building might have structural damage in the days after the attacks, there’s no evidence that Trump was there.
He’s been building on this story for a quarter century
On September 13, 2001, in an interview with NBC, Trump shared the first iteration of the tale:
“Well, not only is it devastation, but it’s very dangerous. Because every few minutes, a whistle will go off and everybody would just run, because you have all the buildings around it, which are in such a weakened state, that people just don’t know.
And so, they just have to take off, and then they come back, and they’re working under 50-story buildings that you don’t know if... if they’re going to fall down. So, it’s a terrible thing for the workers and it’s a terrible thing for the world, really.”
In the interview, Trump says that he has “hundreds of men inside working right now, and we’re bringing down another 125 in a little while.” Asked how his men were holding up, he talked about the rescue effort finding survivors — “like the five firemen that they just found a little while ago” — without ever saying his own crew was the one doing the finding. While Trump has bragged about having men at the scene, there is no evidence that this actually happened.
But what’s interesting about this quote isn’t the lie about him having a crew down there, but the fact that he described the chaos in buildings near ground zero as happening to other people, not him. “Everybody would just run, because you have all the buildings around it, which are in such a weakened state that people just don’t know.” Everybody runs, but he’s not one of them. Later in the same interview, describing the men digging through the rubble: “And above them you have 55-story buildings that are very possibly going to be pouring down on them any minute.” On them.
Then, fourteen years later during a campaign stop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Trump shared a slightly different version of the story. Now he was a part of it.
“And I was there when we actually thought the U.S. Steel Building was coming down and I’ll never forget that I was standing next to these two massive wonderful firemen and we heard a screech, like a screech, steel on steel and it was a couple of days after the buildings and I was down there with the — we had a crew of people that, you know, to help.
I mean it’s — they needed a lot of help. I’ve never seen anything like I saw, and they heard a screech, and everybody thought that the U.S. Steel Building was coming down and it was not so far from us. And these two guys there were massive guys, two really big — because I’m a big guy and they grabbed me. I must tell you honestly, I never knew I could run that fast. I — but they were running just as fast and they had my arms and they were and we were just running.”
It’s evolved. He’s now at the scene with his crew, and here’s the first appearance of the two firemen. But look at what he says they actually did. They grabbed his arms, and he ran — so fast that he surprised himself. He also gives you a date, “a couple of days after the buildings,” and a location: “not so far from us.” He’s outside the building.
Five years after that, on Newsmax, the story changes again.
“I was down there right after the event, and I brought a big crew of people down. And I helped. A lot of other people helped. Those first responders are very brave. And I’m telling you, we were hearing creaks — I’ve never forgotten it. There was, I think, the United States Steel Building, it was called at the time, and it’s 50 stories tall. And we heard creaks. I said, ‘that building is going to come down,’ and two big firemen grabbed me, grabbed other people. It never came down, but I never heard a noise like that. It was a scary situation.”
Okay. Sure. But then, by Tuesday, the qualifiers were gone. No date. No “not so far from us.” Nobody else getting grabbed. And Trump wasn’t running anymore — he was being carried.
He can’t stop lying about 9/11
Hours after the towers fell on 9/11, Trump called in to WWOR-TV. Someone asked him about the condition of one of his buildings, 40 Wall Street. He said this:
“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.”
Now, this might seem like a really callous thing to brag about on 9/11, but what makes it even more bizarre is the fact that 40 Wall Street was not actually the tallest building in lower Manhattan. 70 Pine was still 25 feet taller than 40 Wall Street. And while that seems like a trivial thing to take issue with, I think it’s indicative of Trump’s tendency to make things up.
In November 2015, Trump said during a campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, that he personally witnessed people jump out of the towers on 9/11, watching from his apartment:
“Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that. I have a view — a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center. And I watched those people jump and I watched the second plane hit ... I saw the second plane hit the building and I said, ‘Wow that’s unbelievable.’”
Two days earlier, at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, Trump told the audience that he “watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. 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.” He doubled down on the line during an interview with ABC News’ This Week. There is no evidence that there were “thousands and thousands of people” cheering the 9/11 attacks.
In Buffalo in April 2016, Trump publicly claimed that he was personally at ground zero clearing rubble (this is the same speech where he accidentally referred to it as 7-Eleven instead of 9/11):
“These people were going through terror and you know what happened. Everyone who helped clear the rubble. And I was there and I watched and I helped a little bit. But I want to tell you, those people were amazing. Clearing the rubble, trying to find additional lives. You didn’t know what was gonna come down on all of us and they handled it. Every small act of kindness, every great act of courage, those are New York values, OK? So when a guy like lying Ted Cruz talks about, talks about New York values folks, those are the values that we want to talk about.”
On July 29, 2019, during an event permanently authorizing the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, speaking to a crowd of first responders, Trump made sure to say that while he doesn’t consider himself a first responder, he was totally there.
“In a few moments, I will sign the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. This law makes permanent the financial support for families who lost precious loved ones as a result of September 11th attacks. It also provides pensions for those who are suffering from cancer and other illnesses stemming from the toxic debris they were exposed to in the aftermath of the attacks. Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. And I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
The next day, Richard Alles, who was an FDNY battalion chief on September 11 and spent months on the site in its aftermath, spoke with PolitiFact, telling them, “I was there for several months — I have no knowledge of his being down there.” And if Trump had sent a crew of 100 workers, “there would be a record of it. Everybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services. Is there a chance he was ever down there by himself and I didn’t know it? It’s possible, but I know of no one who ever witnessed him there.” Alles, who is now director of 9/11 community affairs at the law firm Barasch and McGarry, which represents people filing Victim Compensation Fund claims, also told PolitiFact that Trump’s line about being at ground zero was not on the Teleprompter.
While speaking at the Pentagon on the 18th anniversary of 9/11, Trump said:
“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 the sudden they cut away. At first there were different reports. ‘It was a boiler fire.’ But I knew that boilers aren’t at the top of a building. ‘It was a kitchen explosion in Windows of the World.’ Nobody really knew what happened. There was great confusion.
I was looking out from a building in midtown Manhattan directly at the World Trade Center when I saw a second plane, at a tremendous speed, go into the second tower.
Soon after, I went down to ground zero with men who worked for me to try to help in any little way that we could. We were not alone. So many others were scattered around trying to do the same, they were all trying to help.”
Trump Tower is more than 4 miles away from ground zero. He almost certainly could not see people jumping from the towers with the naked eye. It’s possible he’s confusing this with TV coverage he watched.
And then just this past Sunday, Trump appeared on Fox News:
“I had an apartment where I’m viewing the World Trade Center from midtown. I was downtown, but it’s not very far when the building is 115 stories tall. And I’m viewing this thing happen, and I’m saying, ‘That’s crazy. Couldn’t be a plane. Maybe it was a missile.’
And then I saw the second plane hit, and you saw that coming, and you’re watching it and it’s — because I watched the air patterns for years, and you know where the planes are, they go right up the Hudson River. This thing was coming right into the second building. And I said, ‘Wow!’ So I watched that happen, and I said ‘Wow, we are now in a different time.’ So I saw it and I said ‘The world has just changed.’ And I went down. I was building a building in New York and I had a lot of construction workers, and I went shortly after, the following day. You couldn’t go down the same day. But, like the following day. Very quickly afterwards, and we worked long and hard.”
That’s a lot of bullshit from just one guy.