Donald Trump, who is frequently accused of embellishing or fabricating his personal accounts, stunned observers today when he claimed that firefighters physically carried him out of a building that was at risk of collapsing following the September 11 attacks. The American president, a native New Yorker, was in Manhattan on the day the Twin Towers fell after being struck by two planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda jihadists. This year, the 80-year-old Republican president will not attend the traditional memorial ceremony at the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood — an event where all living former presidents are expected: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. He will, however, deliver a speech at the Pentagon, one of the other sites attacked 25 years ago. His latest account immediately raised questions about its credibility. During a ceremony organized near the White House ahead of the September 11 memorial events, Donald Trump stated: “We gather here to reaffirm the sacred pledge made a quarter of a century ago: we will never forget.” As he often does, he veered away from paying tribute to the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks to tell a story in which he himself was the central figure.
Trump on 9/11: “Firefighters physically carried me out of a building that was about to collapse”
“I was in the middle of constructing a major building in New York and I took the whole crew down there immediately after it happened,” the former real estate developer claimed. He alleged that he was standing near a skyscraper — the United States Steel Building, now known as One Liberty Plaza — which was “creaking, and we thought it was going to come down on top of us.” “Two firefighters, big, powerful guys — and I’m not exactly a small guy myself — literally grabbed me by the hand and said, ‘You’ve got to get out of here’,” Trump continued.
“They picked me up and started running,” he assured the audience, noting that the building in question ultimately did not collapse. The American president also referenced his remarks earlier on Tuesday honoring one of the heroes of September 11 — Welles Crowther, a young man who worked in one of the Twin Towers and helped save numerous lives by participating in evacuation efforts. Known as “the man in the red bandana” — named after the handkerchief he used to cover his mouth — Crowther was killed that day. “The man in the red bandana. He became more famous than me. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all,” Donald Trump said, with a restrained laugh.
Vice President Vance in New York
American media outlets have challenged Trump’s claim that he approached Ground Zero on the day of the attack, and have found no evidence of the large crew of workers he says he dispatched to the scene. In the past, Trump had stated that on the morning of September 11 he was at Trump Tower, located several miles from the World Trade Center. According to The New York Times, the American president decided to attend Friday’s ceremony at the Pentagon “in part because he wanted to give a speech” in New York — a request that was denied, as only victims’ family members are permitted to speak at that ceremony. Trump accused the newspaper of having “made up” that explanation. The administration will be represented in New York by Vice President JD Vance.
On September 11, 2001, 2,977 people lost their lives in the attacks carried out by the jihadist organization Al-Qaeda. Two planes hijacked by terrorists struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third hit the Pentagon, and a fourth — believed to have been targeting either the Capitol or the White House — crashed into a wooded area near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back against the hijackers.
