President Donald Trump told attendees at the Tunnel to Towers Foundation event on Tuesday that firefighters rescued him from the World Trade Center site in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Speaking ahead of the 25th anniversary of the terror strikes, Trump reiterated that he had brought hundreds of construction workers to Manhattan shortly after the towers fell.
“The United States Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down,” Trump said, referring to what is now known as One Liberty Plaza. He added that two large firefighters grabbed him and carried him to safety as they feared the structure was collapsing.
A White House official, Davis Ingle, stated that the president was sharing a personal memory of a city in distress but offered no evidence to corroborate the account. Ingle pointed instead to photographs posted by Trump on social media showing the president in New York City days after the attacks.
The remarks came after New York Magazine characterized the anecdote as inaccurate regarding Trump’s location on 9/11. In response, Trump posted online on Tuesday, asserting, “I was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter, with a large group of Construction Workers,” and insisting his speech was “exactly accurate.”
This is not the first time Trump has shared this version of events. During a January 2016 campaign rally in New Hampshire, he described a similar scene, saying, “I must tell you, honestly, I never knew I could run that fast.” Fact-checkers and reporters have repeatedly noted that there is no evidence the incident occurred.
Trump has made other claims about the day of the attacks that lack corroboration. In 2019, he stated he witnessed the second plane hitting the South Tower from a midtown Manhattan building. In 2015, he alleged that he saw thousands of people in Jersey City cheering as the towers fell, a claim that has never been substantiated.
Does anyone actually believe him anymore? He was clearly not in lower Manhattan that morning. Please stop fabricating heroic tales.
I remember when he claimed he saw the second plane hit. Another vivid memory with zero proof? Makes you wonder what else is made up.
Unbelievable. He has repeated this false story for years and refuses to correct the record. It is frankly embarrassing.