Buddy really has no chill. Donald Trump has added a striking new chapter to his long-running account of where he was and what he did in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.
Speaking Tuesday at a ceremony on the Ellipse near the White House commemorating the upcoming 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Trump recalled being near Ground Zero when another Manhattan building appeared to be in danger of collapsing. The event, organized by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, featured a massive steel beam recovered from the South Tower.
Trump told the crowd that he had taken construction workers downtown following the attacks and remembered the building then known as the U.S. Steel Building creaking nearby.
According to Trump, firefighters quickly moved to get him out of danger.
“Two firemen, big strong guys, they grabbed me under the arms—‘got to get out of here!’—and they literally lifted me up, and they started running with me.”
It is a dramatic story, and one that adds a previously unheard detail to Trump’s years of public recollections about 9/11. There is also no independent evidence currently available verifying that the rescue happened.
Trump’s broader claims about working at Ground Zero have been examined repeatedly over the years. In 2019, PolitiFact interviewed Richard Alles, who was an FDNY battalion chief on September 11 and arrived at the scene shortly after the second tower collapsed. Alles said he had no knowledge of Trump or a large Trump construction crew participating in the operation.
Alles also explained that a crew numbering around 100 workers would have operated under the supervision of emergency authorities and should have generated records.
Trump’s whereabouts that morning are clearer. During a 2019 Pentagon commemoration, he gave his own account of first learning about the attack.
“I vividly remember when I first heard the news. I was sitting at home watching a major business television show early that morning.”
Trump was documented near Ground Zero in television interviews on September 13, two days after the attacks. During those interviews, he claimed more than 100 of his workers were helping and that additional workers were coming. Subsequent efforts by journalists and fact-checkers have not independently verified that workforce.
That history now puts Tuesday’s firefighter story under the same microscope.
Trump did not identify the two firefighters who allegedly carried him, and no contemporaneous photograph, video, emergency record or first-responder account has surfaced publicly confirming the encounter.
Twenty-five years later, Trump continues to place himself close to the recovery effort in his telling of those historic days. The documentary record confirms he was downtown shortly afterward. His claims of personally helping with the recovery, sending a large construction crew and now being physically carried to safety by firefighters remain unverified.