As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Trump has once again told the story of being carried away by firefighters near Ground Zero, a claim he’s made before in different versions.
Only days before the 25th anniversary of the devastating September 11 attacks, president Donald Trump decided to revisit a familiar story with new details added about his whereabouts around the date.
Trump said two firefighters had picked him up two days after 9/11 off the ground near what was then known as the U.S. Steel Building, close to Ground Zero, and rushed him away because they feared the building was about to collapse.
“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,” he said.
“They grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ 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.”
Even Trump’s own timeline shifts
This isn’t the first time Trump has told this story. He shared a version of it back in January 2016, during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
On Tuesday, he said the incident happened “right after” the attacks, without giving an exact date.
Later, on Truth Social, Trump clarified that he wasn’t at the World Trade Center “on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter,” seemingly backtracking any suggestion he’d been there on 9/11 itself.
No evidence supporting the claims has ever surfaced
Despite retelling the story multiple times over nearly a decade, Trump has never named the two firefighters involved, and no photograph, video, emergency record, or firsthand account from a first responder has ever surfaced to confirm it happened.
CNN’s fact-check found no public evidence Trump was inside the building he described, now called One Liberty Plaza, in the days following the attacks. The outlet did note that two days after 9/11, he was interviewed outdoors in the vicinity of Ground Zero. This far from confirms the specific rescue he described, however.
PBS spoke with a former official who oversaw emergency response coordination at the site.
“There would be a record of it,” he said, pointing out that everyone working at Ground Zero operated under the direct supervision of police, fire, and emergency services commanders.
“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.”
A long pattern of unverified 9/11 claims
This is far from the only story Trump has told about his actions around 9/11 that hasn’t held up to scrutiny.
He’s previously claimed to have personally helped with recovery efforts and sent a large construction crew to assist, claims that also remain unconfirmed.
On the day of the attacks themselves, Trump was recorded boasting in a TV interview that his own building, 40 Wall Street, had become the tallest in downtown Manhattan following the towers’ collapse.