President Donald Trump told a 9/11 memorial audience that two firefighters grabbed him and carried him away from a building he believed was about to collapse near the World Trade Center site. These claims on Tuesday added a vivid new chapter to a personal September 11 story that critics and former officials have questioned for years.
Donald Trump talks about what happened to him on 9/11
Speaking at the Ellipse in Washington, Trump described bringing his construction crew to Lower Manhattan shortly after the attacks. He said the nearby U.S. Steel building, now called 1 Liberty Plaza, made loud creaking sounds that convinced him it might fall.
“The United States Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down,” Trump said. “I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big strong guys. They grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up.”
He added that the firefighters carried him despite his size. “I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself,’ but they were amazing.” The account conflicts with timelines Trump has shared before.
In a 2016 campaign speech, he said he visited the site with a construction crew “a couple of days after” the Twin Towers fell. The White House sent that clip to reporters when they asked for more details about the firefighter story.
Former New York Fire Department Deputy Chief Richard Alles has publicly rejected Donald Trump’s broader claims of participating in the 9/11 recovery effort. Alles spent months working at Ground Zero. In 2019, he told The New York Times, “I never witnessed him. He was a private citizen at the time. I don’t know what kind of role he could have possibly played.”
Despite the controversy, Trump used the Tuesday event to honor first responders and victims.
