At 2:35 this Labor Day afternoon, Donald Trump was still on vacation at his private golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, when he posted a video of himself with the words, “What Donald Trump saw at… Ground Zero hours after 9/11.” The video was actually taken days later, on September 13, when he was blocks away. In the video, he is wearing an immaculate black suit and a crisp white shirt as he told a German news reporter, “I have about 100 men working down here… and we have another 100 coming in a little while.” He continued, “I was just down at Ground Zero. It’s a disaster, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Hours after he posted the video on social media, the president’s interview with Trey Gowdy was posted on Fox News. This time, he tells a much different story of those terrible days. He told Gowdy, “And I went down… like the following day. Very quickly afterwards, and we worked long and hard.”
The president is not just saying that he sent hundreds of workers to Ground Zero, which has never been proven after nearly 25 years. He is now saying that he himself “worked long and hard” among our hero first responders, even though the video he posted today shows him impeccably dressed without a single speck of dust on him.
His story has never been true. Not then and certainly not now. For nearly 2 and a half decades, nobody has been able to verify any of the many stories he has told about the day our country was attacked and we lost nearly 3,000 souls. His claim about sending his own workers, 100, 200 or even 1 of them to Ground Zero has never been verified. Richard Alles, a former deputy chief with the New York Fire Department who was on the scene about 20 minutes after the second tower collapsed, told PolitiFact, “I was there for several months. I have no knowledge of his being down there.” PolitiFact, USA Today, and Poynter all investigated his claim, and none of them found evidence that Trump helped with the rescue efforts or that he arranged for 200 of his workers to join in the rescue operation. Newsweek went so far as to call it false.
One of the only documented pieces of evidence that Donald Trump was anywhere near Ground Zero in those first days was from a New York Newsday reporter who spotted him on September 13 and described him as wearing the exact same clothes, in the same condition as in the video he shared, down to the impeccably dressed black suit, pressed white shirt, and red tie, as he was walking into the plaza with his cellular phone to his ear saying, “No, no. The building’s gone,” into the phone.
But at that point Donald Trump had already decided he was going to capitalize on the death and destruction happening all around him, and make it all about him. While nearly 3,000 people were dying, and families were desperately searching for their loved ones, Donald Trump called into a local television station for a phone interview. The interviewer asked him about his building at 40 Wall Street, and Trump responded: “Forty Wall Street actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest, and now it’s the tallest.” Except even that wasn’t true. 70 Pine Street was actually the tallest building in Lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers fell, standing about 25 feet taller than Trump’s building at 40 Wall Street.
In 2002, on the first anniversary of the attack, he told Howard Stern that he “saw the whole thing” from his apartment in Midtown Manhattan, roughly four miles from the World Trade Center. He went on to say that he had “two windows that are focused on the building,” once again placing himself inside the story of that day. In 2005, he testified before Congress, where he claimed that “a lot of people could say” that if the World Trade Center had asbestos, “it wouldn’t have burned down” and “wouldn’t have melted.” He used the deaths of nearly 3,000 people to make an argument defending a building material.
In the years that followed, he claimed that he had predicted the September 11th attacks in his book, “The America We Deserve.” But his book did not predict the September 11th attacks. It contained a brief reference to Osama bin Laden, who was already well known to U.S. officials as a terrorist threat before Trump’s book was published. It was another moment where Trump was trying to appear important and relevant.
In 2013, on the 12th anniversary of the attacks, he tweeted: “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.” He called it a “special date.” This tweet was later deleted during his presidential campaign, but it had already been seen, screenshotted, and shared for years at that point. On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history, he called his fellow Americans “haters and losers.”
In November 2015, at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, Donald Trump claimed he watched from Jersey City, New Jersey, as “thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down.” When questioned by ABC News, he doubled down: “It did happen. I saw it. It was on television.” He went on to say, “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.” But that too never happened the way Trump described it. News archives from that day were searched, and nothing was ever found showing thousands and thousands of Muslims having mass celebrations as the towers fell. Quite the opposite really, there were Muslim Americans condemning the attacks, praying, and bracing themselves for the anti-Muslim backlash that was already beginning. Trump took unsubstantiated rumors and turned them into a story about thousands of Muslims celebrating the murder of their fellow Americans, a story that vilified Muslim Americans and fueled hatred.
In April 2016, he told a rally he “helped a little bit” to clear rubble at Ground Zero. That same year, he claimed he lost “hundreds of friends” on September 11th. He actually thought it would be believable that his own friends account for roughly 6% of the the people who died on that day. When pushed to name all these supposed friends, he has never been able to provide a single name other than one Catholic priest who served as chaplain to the city’s fire department.
In April 2017, after he was already the president, he bragged that an interview he did on CBS’s Face the Nation got the show its highest ratings since “the World Trade Center came down.” He used the murder of nearly 3,000 people to try to make his interview viewership look good.
Then in July 2019, about halfway through his presidency, he was at a Rose Garden ceremony with first responders for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, when he told them all: “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
In September 2021, on the 20th anniversary, Trump started telling a brand new story. He claimed he heard creaking at a building near Ground Zero and told first responders, “That building is coming down,” right before he was grabbed by “two big firemen” who moved him to safety. That story had never been even hinted at before. Not by Trump or by these supposed firefighters. Twenty years after the attacks, he was suddenly creating new stories to make him look like a hero during those dark days.
Every year, his stories get bigger and more grandiose. Every year, he gets closer to the rubble, works harder, stays longer, and of course, saves more people. The towers themselves even grew taller in tonight’s interview. He told Gowdy the building was “115 stories tall.” The Twin Towers were 110 stories. He even made the buildings grow to make his story sound more impressive.
He is incapable of allowing September 11th to belong to the people who actually suffered. We think of those who lost their lives. The families forever changed and missing the people they love. We remember the firefighters who climbed those stairs, knowing they might never come back down, and still ran toward danger. The construction workers who spent months in toxic dust and are still suffering and dying from breathing it all in. But for Donald Trump, it was just another opportunity for him to shine. He has to be the one who saw it first. He wants us to think he somehow knew it was coming. He wants to be seen as the hero who sent the workers. And now he wants us to think of September 11th and think of how brave he was and how he spent long and hard days helping his country at Ground Zero.
Never one to miss a money grab, Trump also capitalized then, too. After September 11th, the federal government created a more than $500 million program to help businesses in Lower Manhattan recover from the devastating economic impact of the attacks. Trump applied for and accepted $150,000 from the fund, his company supposedly qualified under the program’s rules, due to economic as well as physical losses, even though he told that German television reporter on September 13th that his property at 40 Wall Street was not affected by what happened. He also pledged that he would donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund, but the New York City Comptroller’s office later reviewed the donor records and found no record of that donation.
Now, as we approach the 25th anniversary, Donald Trump continues to try to make this day all about himself. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush are all expected to attend the special memorial at Ground Zero, where they will stand together to remember those we lost. Trump will not be attending Ground Zero. He is instead expected to commemorate September 11th at the Pentagon. Trump had reportedly planned to attend the Ground Zero ceremony, but changed those plans because he wanted to give a speech, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum does not allow politicians to give remarks at the annual ceremony, a longstanding rule meant to rightfully keep the focus on the victims and their families.
The New York Times reported that Trump’s team conducted advance visits to Ground Zero, sharing his desire to speak at the event. When organizers reminded them of the no-speeches rule, it was quickly announced that he would not be attending. He chose to go to the Pentagon instead, where, as Commander in Chief, he controls the venue and can theoretically speak as long as he wants. No doubt his speech will focus on making him the center of attention on this sad day of remembrance.
Vice President JD Vance will instead attend the Ground Zero ceremony in Trump’s place. When asked at a White House briefing why the president was not going, Vance said, “You have a vice president and you have a president... we’d like to be three or four places on 9/11 but you can’t have one person be in multiple locations at the exact same time.” He tried to pass off the issue as a logistical one instead of the ego issue it really was.
This week will be another hard one, especially for those who have had to live their lives without their loved ones for the past 25 years. For so many, the sting they feel every time Donald Trump makes it about himself is almost unbearable. We will need to brace ourselves for however he chooses to pervert the day as it approaches.
Earlier today, my mother made a special request to include a specific call to action tonight. In her own resistance, she has been encouraging people to check their voter registration status. We are hearing about more people, especially those in Texas, who have found themselves on the state’s voter “suspense” list and needing to confirm their information. So if you haven’t checked, do so now. And then make a plan to keep checking every few days. We cannot afford to assume everything is fine. We need to stay ahead of anything that could keep us from casting our votes.
It’s not often, in fact, it’s exceedingly rare that I am able to end my posts with a reason to smile or laugh, but tonight let’s do that. In Victoria, British Columbia, the city my family has visited nearly every summer for years, someone hung a wooden sign above a public restroom along the Galloping Goose Regional Trail, near the Selkirk Trestle. A bathroom I have proudly used on our long daily walks when we are on the island. The sign read: “The President Donald J. Trump Memorial.” It hung directly over the entrance to the toilets. The city took the sign down, but not before it was covered by local news and is now being shown far and wide. No one knows who put it up. I cannot wait to visit those toilets next summer, and I hope the sign comes back.
It reminded me tonight of something important: how humor is one of the oldest tools of resistance, and how it can reach people who are not necessarily as tuned in to what is happening. It is how people have always pushed back against tyranny and corruption, and it is a way to remind each other that none of this is okay, or normal, and that we see through it.
It is fitting that tonight, a man who has spent 25 years trying to make himself the hero of September 11th was given his most fitting memorial of all: a plaque over a public toilet on a walking trail in Canada. And maybe there is something hopeful in knowing that even after everything we have been through, people are still finding ways to resist, to laugh, and to let each other know that we still see what is happening around us. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: Another gorgeous sunset. We rushed closer to the ocean on our walk tonight to catch the colors in the sky before carrying on just to look towards the ocean again minutes later, and it was even brighter. We are so lucky with these late-summer, early-winter nightly shows!
Sources used in the writing of this post:
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/jul/30/donald-trump-says-he-spent-lot-time-911-responders/
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/sep/11/fact-checking-mixed-bag-accusations-trump-and-911/
https://www.newsweek.com/what-did-donald-trump-say-september-11-1826013
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/29/brief-history-trump-making-about-himself/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-haters-and-losers/
https://www.factcheck.org/2015/12/trumps-bin-laden-prediction/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-911-building-lie_n_57d8017be4b0fbd4b7bb6182
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/29/politics/donald-trump-9-11-first-responders
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/28/us/politics/trump-sept-11-ground-zero.html
I don’t think they should have taken the sign down, whoever did it did a beautiful tasteful job
Trump is incapable of thinking of anything other than himself and it is really sickening that he wants to make 9/11 about himself. If you ask people it was such a horrendously memorable day they can tell you what they were doing.
I was ironing before going to collect my boys from school when a friend phoned and said put the television on.
It was appalling in USA and UK as many people working in the towers were British too and so far away to be able to get to their loved ones.
The man has no conscience or shame or empathy for those who lost family members in such awful circumstances - I am really glad he will not be at ground zero and would prefer JD Vance not to be there either. It is in memorandum with huge sadness to be attending not just a shoe in.
The Loser can’t resist any moment to make himself the center of every important commemorative event. He wasn’t at Ground Zero until days later, he never sent workers to assist the first responders and he didn’t lose 100’s of friends on 9/11. He is a grifter and conman who looks to make a buck off anyone suffering tragic losses and a narcissist who craves being the center of attention. That’s the story in a nutshell.