Earlier Tuesday Trump spoke at the Steel Across America event at the Ellipse where he recounted another one of his bogus stories of him being a hero during the 9/11 attacks.
Trump did his best reading the prepared remarks about 9/11 and then wandered into another one of his lies that he first told in 2021 to Russian asset Benny Johnson.
We had other buildings, the United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking.
And we thought it was going to fall down.
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 and 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.
In 2023, Politifact rated these claims as "false."
In a Facebook post, Johnson claimed, “Donald Trump spent 9/11 marching into a war zone of fire and ashes with an army of his own men to save Americans.”
News accounts from that time put Trump about 4 miles from ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001, and footage shows him blocks away on Sept. 13, 2001, and Sept. 18, 2001. None of those images or reports show him amid fire and ashes. And there is no record he was directly involved with first responders at the scene or that he sent hundreds of workers to aid the recovery. When asked, Trump has not provided evidence to corroborate the claims.
We rate this claim False.
In reality, Trump was on the phone bragging that his building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan.
President Trump was not in the vicinity of the World Trade Center when it was hit. He was in Trump Tower, miles away from the towers and nearby One Liberty Plaza, which is/was also known as the US Steel building.
There was public concern in the days following the attack that One…— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 8, 2026
Despite 2001 Promise, Donald Trump Made No 9/11 Donations in Year After Attack, Audit Finds - ABC News https://t.co/3QQBV1vfmJ
— Christopher Tchidap (@Braves2124) September 8, 2026
