Fact-Check: Trump Claims Firefighters Carried Him From Ground Zero After 9/11

The account marks an evolution in the president’s past statements regarding his involvement in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Speaking on the White House Ellipse ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Trump told the audience that he had brought a crew of construction workers to New York following the disaster. He described a moment when a nearby structure, formerly known as the U.S. Steel Building and now called One Liberty Plaza, began to creak, prompting a sudden evacuation.

“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, ‘Got to 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,”

Trump said, according to ABC News.

Fact-Checking the Ground Zero Accounts

Independent fact-checkers and news organizations have found no evidence to substantiate Trump’s claims of being carried by firefighters or his assertions that he brought hundreds of construction workers to the site. PolitiFact previously reported that records from the New York City Fire Department and other emergency commands do not document Trump’s presence or assistance in the recovery operations in the manner he described.

According to PolitiFact, the earliest photographic and video records place Trump near Ground Zero on September 13, 2001, two days after the attacks, when he gave interviews to media outlets including German television station N24. During those September 13 interviews, Trump stated that he had approximately 100 men from his company working at the site to help clear debris and assist in reconstruction efforts.

Richard Alles, who served as a New York Fire Department battalion chief at the time of the attacks, told PolitiFact in previous interviews that he had no knowledge of Trump or a large crew of his workers operating at the site. Alles noted that all recovery work operated under the direct supervision of the police and fire departments and the joint commander for emergency services.

Previous Unsubstantiated Statements

The recent account on the White House Ellipse follows several other unverified claims Trump has made over the years regarding his observations of the 9/11 attacks. During a 2019 anniversary event, Trump claimed he watched a second plane hit the World Trade Center from a building in Midtown Manhattan, despite Trump Tower sitting approximately four miles away from the site.

In 2015, during a campaign rally in Birmingham, Alabama, Trump asserted that he watched thousands of people celebrating the disaster in Jersey City, New Jersey. Local authorities and journalistic investigations at the time were unable to verify that any such celebrations took place.

Regarding the latest statements, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle defended the president’s remarks to ABC News by stating that Trump was simply “relaying his experience of a city reeling” in the wake of the tragedy, while pointing to social media posts featuring archival images of Trump in New York City during September 2001.