Trump faces fresh scrutiny over shifting claims about his actions on 9/11
Speaking at an event ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the US President claimed that two firefighters picked him up off the ground near the US Steel Building close to ground zero “right after” the terrorist attacks.
“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.
Without specifying exactly when the incident took place, he said firefighters "grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here."
He said the heroic pair whisked him away because they believed the building was going to collapse on them.
"They literally lifted me up" he said.
"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. They thought it was coming down,” he added.
Trump, who initially claimed he was “down there right after this happened”, later took to Truth Social to clarify that he was not at the World Trade Center “on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter”
Speaking on the Ellipse outside the White House, Trump insisted “everything I said was exactly accurate,” sharing a TV clip of him speaking to reporters after the attacks.
The US President has relayed the story at least once before, during a January 2016 campaign visit to New Hampshire.
When asked for clarity on the president’s timeline, White House spokesperson David Ingle said he “was relaying his experience of a city reeling immediately after and in the days and weeks after the horrific attacks.”
He has spoken about what he saw on 9/11 several times before. In August 2026, he told Fox News that he watched the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
“I’m watching, and I saw the second plane hit, and you saw that come, and you’re watching it, and it’s - because I watched the air patterns for years, and you, you know, you know where the planes are. They go up right up the Hudson River. This thing was coming right into the second building. And I said, ‘Wow!’ So I watched that happen,” Trump said in the interview, shortly after he said he watched the scene unfold from his midtown apartment.
He also claimed he went down to ground zero on Sept. 12, telling host Trey Gowdy that he “worked long and hard” with a team of construction workers at the scene.
He said: “I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers. And I went down there very shortly thereafter. The following day - you couldn’t go down the same day, but, like, the following day, very, very quickly afterwards. And we worked long and hard, but it was just so terrible and so hopeless.”
In April 2016, while speaking at a campaign rally in Buffalo, New York, Trump claimed he helped clear rubble after the attacks.
“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,
“You didn’t know what was gonna come down on all of us,” he added.
In November 2015, he told audiences at a campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, that he watched people jumping out of the towers from his apartment in Trump Tower, which is four miles from Ground Zero.
“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,’” he said.
In a phone interview in 2001, he told a local news station that he had spoken to someone that day who witnessed “at least 10 people” jumping out of the towers.
Controversially, at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, in November 2015, he contributed to a conspiracy theory that “thousands” of people cheered in New Jersey as the towers fell.
“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,” Trump said.
He told ABC that month that “there were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations.”
“They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down - as those buildings came down - and that tells you something. It was well covered at the time.”
There is no evidence this took place, and the rumours at the time were debunked by local police.
World Affairs Correspondent
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