President Donald J Trump makes remarks at a Steel Across America Event on the Ellipse in Washington, DC, USA, on Tuesday, September 8, 2026 Annabelle Gordon - Pool Via Cnp/CNP via ZUMA Press Wire
Where was Donald Trump on 9/11? Getting pulled from Ground Zero by firefighters, he seemed to claim on Tuesday.
Nup.
“We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big strong guys… they grabbed me under the arms, said, ‘got to get out of here!’ and they literally lifted me up… and they started running with me,” the president said in a rambling speech at a memorial ceremony near the White House on Tuesday morning.
But calling into a local television station a few hours after the attacks in 2001, the real estate developer recounted watching an explosion out of his Trump Tower window more than four miles from the Twin Towers. True to form, he found a way to make the moment about himself, adding that his building, 40 Wall Street, was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan.
The president has landed himself in several 9/11-related controversies in the last 25 years. During the 2016 presidential race, he ignored pleas to help 9/11 first responders pass the reauthorization of the law that set up a health care fund for the police, firefighters, and other rescue workers. In 2015, he falsely said “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in Jersey City cheered the destruction of the Twin Towers. And after the attacks, he “ignored the federal definition of a small business” to collect economic recovery aid meant to go to small businesses for his building at 40 Wall Street.
This year, Trump will be the only living president not in attendance at the Ground Zero memorial ceremony in New York City for the 25th anniversary of the attacks, in part because the ceremony’s organizers wouldn’t let him deliver a speech, according to a New York Times report. Trump responded by saying the story was made up and calling Times reporter Maggie Haberman, one of the four reporters bylined on the story, “Maggot.”
