During a recent appearance, President Trump told a new version of a story he’s been refining for years: that after the September 11 attacks, two firefighters grabbed him under the arms, lifted him, and ran him to safety near Ground Zero because they feared another structure was about to come down. It’s a vivid image. It’s also one that fact-checkers at PolitiFact, The New York Times, and USA Today have never been able to verify — and it fits a pattern of 9/11 claims going back at least to 2016 with nothing to back them up.
What fact-checkers have actually found
The record on this is specific. Trump was not at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. Contemporary reporting placed him at Trump Tower, roughly four miles from the World Trade Center, on the day of the attacks. He was interviewed several blocks from the site on September 13, and photographed again in Lower Manhattan on September 18. Being near the site is not nothing — but it is not the story he tells.
In 2016, Trump said he had been at Ground Zero and “helped a little bit” with clearing the rubble. PolitiFact investigated that statement and could not confirm it happened. The White House provided no corroborating evidence. Richard Alles, an FDNY battalion chief on September 11, told PolitiFact he had no knowledge of Trump working at the site — and Alles was there from shortly after the second tower collapsed through months of recovery. He said he knew of no first responder who had seen Trump participate.
Trump also claimed repeatedly — including in TV interviews on September 13, 2001 — that more than 100 of his employees were working at Ground Zero, with another 100 to 125 on their way. Fact-checkers have not been able to verify that those workers participated in the official recovery operation. Alles noted to PolitiFact that a crew that size would have left records in the official response system because all workers at the site operated under police, fire, and emergency-service command.
In 2023, PolitiFact reviewed a viral claim that Trump had spent September 11 “marching into a war zone of fire and ashes” with his workers to save Americans. It rated that claim False, finding no news coverage from the time showing Trump participating directly in rescue work. One photograph that had circulated as supposed proof turned out to have Trump digitally inserted into an image of actual rescue workers.
The irony nobody is glossing over
What makes the newest firefighter story land differently isn’t just the implausibility — it’s the timing. Trump will not attend the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero in New York. He is choosing the Pentagon commemoration instead.
The people who will be at Ground Zero on that anniversary are the families who lost someone, the first responders who are still dealing with illness from what they breathed that day, and the ones who simply never stopped showing up. The firefighters in Trump’s latest story grabbed him under the arms and ran. The firefighters in the real story ran toward the towers. There’s a version of honoring them that doesn’t involve becoming the protagonist of their worst day. Trump hasn’t found it yet.
