With each passing year it appears that President Donald Trump’s account of where he was and what he was doing during the 9/11 terror attacks evolves.
Yet it’s fair to say that he’s never leaned into the idea that he was personally in danger on the day commercial airliners were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center.
Until now.
On Tuesday, September 8, Trump spoke at a ceremony on the White House Ellipse to honor emergency responders. The 80-year-old – notorious, it must be said, for embellishing facts and twisting narratives – shared a never-before-heard account of being physically carried to safety from a building close to Ground Zero.
“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,” Trump told the audience.
“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.”
Trump added that One Liberty Plaza, then known as the U.S. Steel Building, started to creak as though it might collapse while he was present at the site. The POTUS made the claims as he was presenting Welles Crowther’s wife with a posthumous honor. The ceremony itself was held to celebrate the bravery of Crowther, famously known as the man in the red bandana.
Following his comments, social media erupted in response, with many casting doubts on Trump’s story, or at the very least wondering why this is the first time he’s decided to talk about it.
Meanwhile, publications including New York Magazine, reviewed the claims and could find no factual evidence that he was present at the World Trade Center site on 9/11.
In light of the criticism, White House spokesman Davis Ingle fired back, issuing an official statement that hit out at scrutiny from reporters and the public, and instead focused on the event’s purpose.
As per CNN, he said: “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.”
Trump took to Truth Social to double down on the claims he made about his whereabouts on September 11, 2001. After being fact-checked by multiple sources, Trump clarified he wasn’t there “on the same day as the collapse” but “shortly thereafter, with a large group of Construction workers.”
The president’s post read: “Everything I said was exactly accurate and, to prove the point, I am attaching clips of me there with numerous of my people, including my then Head of Security, Matthew Calamari, who has confirmed that very sad trip to Lower Manhattan, many times, to many different Journalists, but it’s a story that just won’t die.
“The Fake News doesn’t want to listen, even when they know their story is false. That’s why their approval ratings are at an All Time LOW, but mine are VERY HIGH!”
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