Donald Trump often refers to the attacks on the World Trade Center, the devastating Al Qaeda attack that struck his hometown, New York, 25 years ago. However, his memories of that day have repeatedly included exaggerations and falsehoods.
Even this week, he shared an anecdote at a White House event commemorating the attacks that is not entirely accurate.
Below are some of the ways compiled by the British newspaper The Guardian in which Trump has distorted the facts about September 11, 2001, from shortly after the attacks to his second presidential term.
Shortly after the attacks, Trump stated in a phone interview with a local news anchor that the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center –the North Tower specifically, which at the time was the tallest building in the Big Apple– meant that his property at 40 Wall Street, the Trump Building, became the tallest in downtown Manhattan.
“That is, 40 Wall Street was actually the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And, in fact, it was before the World Trade Center was the tallest,” Trump said. “And then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest. And now it is the tallest.”
But it was not: the building at 70 Pine Street, located a block away, held that position.
Trump has repeatedly claimed to have helped with recovery efforts after the collapse of the World Trade Center. “Everyone who helped clear the debris… I was there, watched and helped a little,” he said during a 2016 campaign event.
That comment echoed a claim he made shortly after the attack, when he told a German TV network that “we would have a couple of hundred people down here” helping with the cleanup.
In 2019, PolitiFact interviewed a chief of the New York Fire Department, who did not recall Trump even sending workers to the site.
“I myself spent many months there and never saw him,” Richard Alles, a retired New York Fire Department official who was a battalion chief on September 11 and attended a Trump White House event that year, told The New York Times in 2019. Alles told PolitiFact in 2019 that if Trump had sent a crew of 100 workers, “there would be records of it. Everyone worked under the direct supervision of the police, fire department, and joint emergency services command.”
Also, a former Trump Organization executive told Politico in 2016 that Trump did not do much out of the ordinary that day.
When he first campaigned for president in 2016, Trump repeated the story that “thousands and thousands” of Muslim Americans “were celebrating” in New Jersey on the day of the 2001 attacks.
Despite numerous fact-checks, no evidence has been found to support this claim.
In September 2019, Trump retweeted a video allegedly showing Minnesota Congresswoman, Democrat Ilhan Omar – Muslim and the first Somali-American to serve in the U.S. Congress – dancing on the anniversary of the attacks.
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He also accompanied the video with the message: “The new face of the Democratic Party!”.
CBS News reported that Omar had been dancing at an event organized by the Black Caucus, a political organization of African American members of Congress. But this event did not take place on September 11.
In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump mentioned Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as part of “a bewildering series of minor crises” facing the United States.
At that time, Bin Laden was known to Americans because Al Qaeda had orchestrated the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
That did not stop Trump from writing on X in 2018 that the United States “should have captured Osama bin Laden much earlier than we did,” adding: “I pointed it out in my book just BEFORE the World Trade Center attack”.
During a ceremony held this Tuesday at the White House Ellipse to honor the emergency teams who responded to the attacks, Trump said that – when he and a group of workers went to visit downtown Manhattan shortly after the attacks – he was pulled out of the area by firefighters concerned that the One Liberty Plaza skyscraper might collapse.
“Two firefighters, big strong guys – and I’m not exactly the smallest man in the world – grabbed me under the arms and said, ‘We have to get out of here.’ And they literally carried me off,” the president said.
“It’s not easy to do that. I’m a big man. They lifted me and started running with me. I said, ‘Guys, I can run myself,’ but they were incredible. They thought the building was going to collapse. But it didn’t collapse.”
PolitiFact notes that Trump has told a version of this story before, even in an interview with Fox News aired earlier this week. However, it appears to be an exaggeration.
While concern about the stability of the One Liberty Plaza building prompted the evacuation of at least one nearby building the day after the attack, there is no evidence that Trump was there, and his claim of having brought workers to the site lacks proof.
Also, CNN says there is no basis to claim that One Liberty Plaza “still creaks.” Trump said: “The truth is it creaked a lot, it creaked. It still creaks.” There is no basis for this claim. The One Liberty Plaza office building reopened in October 2001, less than two months after September 11, and operates normally today.
The White House stated in an unsigned email sent Tuesday: “At that time (Trump) was a private citizen; not everything he did was documented.”
Trump added in a social media post Tuesday night that “everything I said was exactly accurate.”
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