Shortly before the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, US President Donald Trump statedthat shortly after the attacks, two firefighters carried him away from the building next to the World Trade Center, fearing it would collapse. The head of the White House also said that he brought his builders to the site to help after the terrorist attacks. American media questioned these statements, pointing out the lack of confirmation of some details of the president's story. What arguments the parties give are in the RTVI material.
At the Sept. 8 speech, Trump described how he would “never forget” two firefighters who feared a nearby building would “collapse on top of them.” He called the rescuers “big, strong guys,” adding that he himself was “not the smallest person in the world.” According to the president, the building in question was the US Steel Building, now called One Liberty Plaza and located next to the former World Trade Center complex.
“They grabbed me by the arms and said: “We have to get out of here!” And they literally lifted me up. It's not easy, I'm big. They picked me up and ran. I said, “Guys, I can run on my own,” but they were amazing. They thought everything would collapse,” Trump said.
The president later clarified that he was there “not on the day of the collapse, but shortly after.”
In an interview with Fox News, Trump also said that he was in New York during the attacks. According to him, at first he could not believe what was happening, and then he saw how the second plane crashed into a skyscraper.
Trump emphasized that at that moment he thought: “Wow, we live in a different time now” and “the world has just changed.” The President also recalled that the World Trade Center buildings were huge and he was shocked by how quickly they “came straight down.” He then talked about a trip to Lower Manhattan shortly after the attacks.
“And I went there. I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers, and I went there very soon after that, the next day—you couldn't go the same day—but the next day. Very quickly after that,” Trump explained.
Some American media and journalists have questioned the president's account of what happened in those days. CNN's Daniel Dale, who specializes in fact-checking, noted in his piece that Trump has for years told false, controversial or unsupported stories about his actions during and after the attacks. The White House, according to the channel, did not provide evidence of the firefighter story in response to a corresponding request.
CNN also notes that at the time of the September 11 attacks, Trump was at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, several miles from the World Trade Center. At the same time, the president himself subsequently clarified that the story with the firefighters did not happen on the day of the terrorist attacks, but later. New York Magazine also questioned the president's story, calling it a “bizarre lie.”
In response, the head of the White House criticized the magazine, demanded a retraction and published a video showing him and several people, including his then-chief of security, Matthew Calamari, in Lower Manhattan after the attacks. Trump later published other photos and videos from those days to confirm that he came to the World Trade Center area
However, the media could not find evidence that Trump and his workers participated in clearing the rubble. Former New York City Deputy Fire Chief Richard Alles told The New York Times (NYT) that he “spent many months there and never saw” Trump. As early as 2024, Newsweek noted that the claim that Trump hired hundreds of workers to help clean up the attacks had not been independently verified.
Timothy O'Brien, who wrote a biography of Trump, told the NYT that the future president did not have many of his own employees at the time to send to the scene of the tragedy: according to him, the central staff of the Trump Organization numbered about a dozen people. In separate comments to the Miami Herald, O'Brien added that Trump during those years was “by no means a person who would come to the rescue in an emergency.”
Some politicians also reacted negatively to the president's statements. California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, noted, commenting on the story about the two firefighters, that it was “absolutely disgusting to lie” about the events of those years. Former Republican strategist Tara Setmayer also accused Trump of lying.
“Trump is a disgusting liar. This is a completely fictitious story. Where are the journalists who should be checking facts and not spreading this nonsense??? Don't let Trump desecrate the memory of 9/11 with his delusional fantasies,” Setmayer wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Trump will not attend the September 11 memorial ceremony in New York. The President explained this by saying that the organizers of the memorial do not allow politicians to speak at the event. Vice President J.D. Vance and former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are expected to attend the ceremony. The first Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, will also appear there, which caused a separate controversy, as RTVI reported.
The commemorative ceremony at the Ground Zero memorial in New York will be monitored by the RTVI team. Live we will show archival footage from 2001 from the scene of the tragedy and tell how security has changed in the United States. Watch the special broadcast on September 11 at 8:15 New York time on the YouTube channel Duty for America / RTVI using this link.
