WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump used a September 8 ceremony on the Ellipse to honor victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks and to tell a personal story that fact-checkers and first-response officials have said is unsupported by public evidence.
The event, organized with the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, featured a 21-foot steel beam recovered from the South Tower. Trump called the beam “a reminder that America is blessed with a strength no fire can consume, no evil can conquer, and no terror can destroy.” He restated the national vow to “never forget” the nearly 3,000 people killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and aboard Flight 93.
He then described conditions around Ground Zero and a nearby office tower.
“The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down,” Trump said. “The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down. And 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. They said, ‘Got to get out of here,’ and 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. It didn’t come down.”
The building he named is One Liberty Plaza, the black steel tower east of the World Trade Center site, long associated with U.S. Steel. After the towers fell, the building took facade damage and broken glass. Rumors spread that it was leaning or about to collapse. Structural engineers inspected it on September 12, 2001, measured its alignment, and found no movement that indicated collapse risk. City buildings officials stated repeatedly that it was structurally sound and was not in danger of coming down. The tower reopened to tenants in late October 2001.
Trump has told a similar version of the firefighter story before, including during a 2016 campaign stop. Independent reporting on September 8 noted that there remains no public evidence the specific rescue took place. MS NOW correspondent Peter Alexander interrupted coverage to say the president “has famously embellished his relationship to 9/11” and that there was “no evidence that that situation ever took place.”
What is documented about September 11 itself is different. Trump was in Midtown Manhattan. He called WWOR-TV from Trump Tower, roughly four miles from the trade center, and described watching the second plane strike. In the days that followed he gave interviews near Lower Manhattan, including on September 13, and was photographed in the financial district on September 18. Those appearances put him in the vicinity after the attacks. They do not place him inside a collapsing-building rescue on the day of the attacks.
Trump has also said over the years that he sent large numbers of his construction workers to help at Ground Zero. Richard Alles, a retired FDNY deputy chief who arrived at the site within minutes of the second collapse and spent months there in a supervisory role, has told fact-checkers he has no knowledge of Trump being on the pile or of a Trump crew operating under fire and police command. PolitiFact, USA Today, The New York Times, and Newsweek have all reported that those worker claims have not been independently verified.
The rest of Tuesday’s remarks mixed remembrance with politics and policy. Trump honored New York firefighter Jeffrey Palazzo, a Coast Guard reservist killed on 9/11, and said a new Coast Guard cutter would bear his name. He awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Welles Crowther, the equities trader and volunteer firefighter known as the “man in the red bandanna,” who died after helping people out of the South Tower. Crowther’s mother and sister accepted the honor. Trump also warned against what he called a “communistic way” in American politics and said the country was stronger now than before.
Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to represent the administration at the World Trade Center site on the anniversary. Trump is scheduled to speak at the Pentagon. Living former presidents are expected at the New York commemoration, which traditionally does not feature a political address.
