Trump’s six biggest lies about what happened to him on 9/11 exposed ahead of 25th anniversary
In the 25 years that have passed since the devastating events of September 11, 2001, Donald Trump has made a number of bizarre claims about the terrorist attacks, ranging from exaggerated truths to downright lies.
The US president appears to have told these tales so many times over that even he believes them to be the truth.
Here are some of the biggest lies Trump has told about 9/11, dating back to right after the terrorist attack took place up until his ongoing second presidential term.
Claiming he predicted the attacks
In 2018, Trump made the rather bizarre suggestion that he had predicted something like 9/11 was afoot when he wrote his 2000 book, The America We Deserve.
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In the book, he described Osama bin Laden as being one of 'a bewildering series of smaller crises,' the United States was facing at the time.
During this period, the al-Qaida leader was known to American intelligence after he planned and orchestrated the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Nearly two decades later, Trump wrote on X that the US 'should have captured Osama bin Laden long before we did,' before adding: "I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center."
Claiming he was part of the clean up efforts
On a number of occasions Trump has claimed to have been part of the mass clean up efforts, despite this suggestion having been refuted by those on the ground.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, he said: "Everyone who helped clear the rubble, and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."
Several years later, PolitiFact spoke to a New York City fire department battalion chief who said he wasn't aware of Trump having any involvement in cleaning up.
Claiming his building was the tallest in downtown New York
Shortly after the devastating attacks, Trump claimed that the destruction of the World Trade Center, which had been New York City's tallest building, meant that his 40 Wall Street property was then the tallest in downtown Manhattan.
In a call with a local journalist, he said: "I mean, 40 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."
This was factually inaccurate as 70 Pine Street, which is just a block away, was in fact the tallest.
Lying about the Muslim community
During his time in office, Trump has made a number of falsehoods about the Muslim community, but in 2016 the president repeated a story that has been proven to be a lie.
He said that 'thousands and thousands' of Muslim Americans 'were cheering' in New Jersey when the attacks took place.
There have been many attempts to fact check this, but there is no evidence anything like this ever happened.
Lying about Ilhan Omar
Another lie clearly intended to cause division came in September 2019, when Trump retweeted a video allegedly featuring Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who is Muslim and the first Somali American to serve in Congress.
The video purported to show her dancing on the anniversary of 9/11 while branding her 'the new face of the Democrat Party!'
In actual fact, the video of Omar dancing had been taken at an event organized by the congressional Black caucus, on an entirely different date, CBS News reports.
Claims on being rescued by firefighters
Earlier this week, Trump repeated a claim that emergency services feared that One Liberty Plaza, then known as the US Steel Building, might collapse after the building began to creak.
Trump claims he was in the address at the time, prompting two firefighters to physically carry him off the site.
He said: '"We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big strong guys, I'm not the smallest guy in the world, they grabbed me under the arm, 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."
New York Magazine reported there was no evidence Trump was at the World Trade Center site on the day of the attacks.
Trump responded on Truth Social, insisting his accounts was accurate, though he clarified he wasn't there 'on the same day as the collapse' but 'shortly thereafter, with a large group of Construction workers.'
White House responds to 'lies'
In response to reports highlighting the discrepancies in Trump's claims, the White House issued a statement which read: “He was a private citizen at the time, not everything he did was documented.”
Spokesperson Davis Ingle told UNILAD: "President Trump spent the morning paying tribute to the heroic first responders who laid down their lives in service to others in the September 11th attacks and honoring their incredible families.
"The President was relaying his experience of a city reeling immediately after and in the days and weeks after the horrific attacks - and the fact that the failing legacy media is using this to try to attack him is a disgrace and yet another reason why Americans’ trust in the media is at an all-time low.”
Topics: US News, Donald Trump, New York
Emma Rosemurgey