WASHINGTON — At an event ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, President Donald Trump told a story Tuesday in which he said two firefighters picked him up off the ground near the U.S. Steel Building close to ground zero “right after” the terrorist attacks and whisked him away because they thought the building was going to collapse on them.
“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 arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here,’” Trump said, without specifying exactly when the incident occurred.
“They literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down,” he added.
Trump, who said in his remarks that he was “down there right after this happened,” later said on Truth Social that he was not at the World Trade Center “on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter.”
“Everything I said was exactly accurate,” he said of his remarks at the Ellipse outside the White House, sharing a TV news clip of him speaking after the attacks.
Asked for more clarity about Trump’s timeline and actions following 9/11, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said he “was relaying his experience of a city reeling immediately after and in the days and weeks after the horrific attacks.”
Trump has told the firefighter story at least once before, during a January 2016 campaign stop in New Hampshire.
He has spoken many times about what he saw on Sept. 11, 2001, and his actions in the immediate aftermath. Here’s a look back at what he has said, much of which has not been independently verified.
August 2026: Seeing the second plane hit
In an interview with Fox News host Trey Gowdy, which aired in part Sunday, Trump said he watched as the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
“I’m watching, and I saw the second plane hit, and you saw that come, and you’re watching it, and it’s — because I watched the air patterns for years, and you, you know, you know where the planes are. They go up right up the Hudson River. This thing was coming right into the second building. And I said, ‘Wow!’ So I watched that happen,” Trump said in the interview, shortly after he said he watched the scene unfold from his midtown apartment.
Trump also said he went down to ground zero on Sept. 12, telling Gowdy he “worked long and hard” with a team of construction workers to help at the scene.
“I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers. And I went down there very shortly thereafter. The following day — you couldn’t go down the same day, but, like, the following day, very, very quickly afterwards. And we worked long and hard, but it was just so terrible and so hopeless,” he said.
April 2016: Sifting through rubble
At a campaign rally in Buffalo, New York, Trump said he helped clear rubble after the attacks.
Trump was talking about “New York values,” speaking about restaurants and businesses that stayed open to help first responders and others in need.
“These people were going through terror, and you know what happened? Everyone who helped clear the rubble — and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit,” Trump said, adding, “You didn’t know what was gonna come down on all of us.”
November 2015: Witnessing people jump
Trump said at a Nov. 23, 2015, campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, that he saw people jump out of the twin towers from a window in his apartment.
Trump Tower, where Trump lived at the time, is four miles from ground zero.
“Many people jumped, and I witnessed it, I watched that. I have a view — a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center. And I watched those people jump, and I watched the second plane hit. … I saw the second plane hit the building, and I said, ‘Wow that’s unbelievable,’” he said.
He had told a local news station in a phone interview on Sept. 11, 2001, that he had spoken to someone that day who witnessed “at least 10 people” jumping out of the twin towers.
November 2015: Watching people cheer
Trump fed into a conspiracy theory that “thousands” of people cheered in New Jersey as the twin towers fell, telling supporters at a Nov. 21, 2015, campaign rally in Birmingham, Alabama, that he witnessed celebrations in Jersey City.
“I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering,” Trump said.
He told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” in November 2015, “There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations.”
“They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down — as those buildings came down — and that tells you something. It was well covered at the time.”
There is no evidence that thousands of people celebrated in New Jersey following the attack. Local police debunked rumors at the time that people cheered.
