Trump's bizarre account of 9/11: “Two firefighters literally…”

Donald Trump, often accused of embellishing his stories or even partly inventing them, surprised everyone on Tuesday by reporting that he was forcibly removed by two firefighters from a building threatening to collapse after the September 11 attacks.

The American president, a New Yorker, was in Manhattan the day the twin towers collapsed, after being hit by planes hijacked by jihadists.

His latest account of the events, however, immediately raised questions about its veracity. At a ceremony held near the White House ahead of the 9/11 commemorations, Donald Trump declared: “We are gathered here to reaffirm the sacred promise made a quarter of a century ago: we will never forget.” But, as is often the case, he veered away from paying tribute to the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks to launch into a narrative in which he is the hero.

"Grabed" by the firefighters

“I was building a large building in New York and I took the whole team there right after it happened,” said the former real estate developer.

He said he was standing near a skyscraper, the “United States Steel Building” (now One Liberty Plaza), which “was creaking and we thought it was going to fall on us.”

“Two firefighters, big, strong guys, and I’m not short myself, literally grabbed my arm and told me 'We have to get out of here',” Donald Trump continued.

“They picked me up and started running,” he said, adding that the building in question did not ultimately collapse.

The US president also mentioned in his speech on Tuesday one of the heroes of 9/11, Welles Crowther, who worked in one of the twin towers and helped save the lives of several people by participating in the evacuation operations.

Trump on 9/11: I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened., Wasn't too much we could do. We had other buildings, the United States steel building was creaking. I'll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming… pic.twitter.com/kEt6IO71qR

— Acyn (@Acyn)

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The young man, nicknamed “the man with the red bandana” in reference to the scarf with which he had covered his mouth, lost his life that day.

“The man with the red bandana. He’s become more famous than me. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,” said Donald Trump, with a chuckle.

American media outlets doubt that the billionaire approached Ground Zero on the day of the attack and have found no trace of a large group of workers he supposedly sent to the site. His opponents, including Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, denounced his claims. “It’s absolutely repugnant to lie about this,” he responded.

Even Republican Ted Cruz suggested that the US president might have been mistaken. “That was 25 years ago,” he responded on CNN, recalling that the event had been very “traumatic.”

“I was there, of course not on the day of the collapse, but shortly afterward, with a large group of construction workers,” the US president responded Tuesday evening in a lengthy post on his Truth Social network, accompanied by a video showing him answering journalists' questions. “I was there as soon as the law allowed,” he added in the post, launching a vicious attack on the journalists.

As several media outlets, including HuffPost, have pointed out, the initial reaction of the current US president to the events was in poor taste. Contacted by local station WWOR-TV on the day of the attacks, Donald Trump, a prominent figure in the city, was quick to point out that Trump Tower had once again become the tallest building in Manhattan with the collapse of the other towers. This was, moreover, false, as the iconic Empire State Building had reclaimed that title.

Several versions

The American president's dubious statements about 9/11 are nothing new. A few months after that tragic day, Donald Trump himself reported in a book that he was in "Trump Tower" that morning and that he saw people jumping from the World Trade Center towers, even though his building is located in another part of Manhattan, several kilometers away.

In 2015, he claimed in a speech to have seen “thousands and thousands of people applauding” the collapse of the towers in New Jersey, a claim later denied by authorities. He then clarified that he had watched this curious episode “on television,” but no news report had shown these scenes of jubilation, as the Washington Post verified at the time.

Trump at the Pentagon

The 80-year-old Republican will not attend this year's ceremony at the site of the former World Trade Center, where all his living predecessors—George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—are expected. He will deliver a speech at the Pentagon, one of the other sites struck 25 years ago. Vice President JD Vance will represent the government in New York.

According to the New York Times, the US president decided to go to the Pentagon on Friday “in part because he wanted to make a speech” in New York, which was denied because only the victims' families speak during the ceremony at Ground Zero. Donald Trump accused the newspaper of having “invented” this explanation.

On September 11, 2001, 2,977 people died in attacks carried out by the jihadist organization Al-Qaeda. Two planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a third ripped through the Pentagon, and a fourth, which appeared to be targeting the Capitol or the White House, crashed in a wooded area of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after a counterattack by the passengers.