Trump repeats disputed claim firefighters carried him near Ground Zero after 9/11

President Donald Trump arrives to speak during the Tunnel to Towers Foundation event on the Ellipse near the White House in Washington on Tuesday. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

President Donald Trump is again telling questionable stories about his actions following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

On Tuesday, Trump participated in the Tunnel to Towers Foundation's Steel Across America tour, delivering remarks from the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., in honor of the upcoming 25th anniversary of the attacks. His appearance, however, included a familiar and disputed anecdote.

What Trump Said

Trump honored first responders and the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks, posthumously awarding the Medal of Freedom to Welles Crowther — an equities trader and volunteer firefighter who died helping people flee the collapsing South Tower. But the president also used his speech to repeat a questionable account of his own whereabouts and actions after the tragedy.

Trump told the crowd that he had been working on a "big building" when the attacks occurred and that he took the entire construction crew down to ground zero "right after this happened." He claimed that two firefighters then rushed him to safety out of concern that the nearby U.S. Steel Building — now known as One Liberty Plaza — was at risk of collapse. Trump said the building was "creaking" at the time. It was unclear whether "right after" meant the day of the attacks or sometime in the following days.

"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 — they grabbed me under the arms and said, 'Gotta get out of here.' And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and started running with me. I said, 'Fellas, I can run myself.' But they were amazing," Trump said.

Trump Defends His Account

On Tuesday night, Trump defended his remarks in a Truth Social post, attacking media coverage and writing that everything he said at the Ellipse event was "exactly accurate." He notably clarified that while he did visit ground zero, he was there "obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter, with a large group of Construction Workers."

"I was there as soon as the Law allowed," he wrote.

He also attached an old video of himself talking to reporters in lower Manhattan on September 13, 2001 — titled "What Donald Trump Saw at.. Ground Zero hours After 9/11" — in which he decries the attacks and says he just visited ground zero and has men working at or near the site. He does not mention any encounters with firemen in the video.

Fact-Checkers Push Back

Trump's latest rendition of his 9/11 stories drew immediate scrutiny.

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale quickly responded to the president's claims. "President Trump was not in the vicinity of the World Trade Center when it was hit. He was in Trump Tower, miles away from the towers and nearby One Liberty Plaza, which is/was also known as the US Steel building," Dale wrote on X.

In a more in-depth review of Trump's remarks, Dale noted that the first time the president publicly told a similar version of this story was on the campaign trail in 2016. At that point, Trump specified that the firemen anecdote happened "a couple of days" after the attack. Dale added that there is no evidence Trump was even inside One Liberty Plaza following the 9/11 attacks:

"With his comments about how he feared the US Steel building was 'coming down on top of us' and about how a firefighter said 'gotta get out of here,' Trump left open the impression that he was inside an unstable building. But there is no public evidence he was actually in the building he was referring to (better known as One Liberty Plaza in 2001 and still today) in the days after the attacks."

Similarly, PolitiFact noted that while Trump has repeatedly told this story, independent verification of the specific encounter with firefighters remains lacking.