Fact check: Trump’s story about being carried away by firefighters after the 9/11 attack

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump has for years told false or unproven stories about what he supposedly saw and did on 9/11 and soon after. As the 25th anniversary of the terror attack approaches, Trump told another story at the White House on Tuesday — in which he claimed to have been carried away by firefighters amid fears of an imminent building collapse at some point after the attack.

It’s possible there are elements of truth in Trump’s latest story, versions of which he has told before , but he hasn’t provided any evidence for it. And some parts of his Tuesday account — which he delivered at an event honoring 9/11 first responders — are misleading at best. He was miles away from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and was not whisked out of any building near Ground Zero that day.

Asked for evidence for Trump’s story or more details about what supposedly happened, the White House did not provide any.

The White House said in an unsigned Tuesday email, “He was a private citizen at the time, not everything he did was documented.” Later in the day, spokesperson Davis Ingle pivoted to an attack on the media.

“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,” Ingle said.

Here’s a look at what Trump said Tuesday and what the facts are.

Trump wasn’t close to the World Trade Center during the attack or later that day

Trump didn’t specify when the firemen supposedly helped him, but by beginning the story by saying he went to Ground Zero “right after this happened,” he at the least left open the impression that he was whisked to safety on the day of the attack. But that couldn’t have happened because he was miles away, at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, when the attack occurred. A former Trump Organization executive told Politico in 2016 that Trump did not do much out of the ordinary that day.

In a 2016 version of the story, Trump claimed the moment the firemen helped him happened “a couple of days” after the attack.

There’s no public evidence Trump was in the ‘US Steel building’ soon after the attacks

With his comments about how he feared the US Steel building was “coming down on top of us” and about how a firefighter said “gotta get out of here,” Trump left open the impression that he was inside an unstable building. But there is no public evidence he was actually in the building he was referring to (better known as One Liberty Plaza in 2001 and still today) in the days after the attacks. Two days after the attack, he was interviewed outdoors in the general vicinity of Ground Zero.

In Trump’s 2016 telling of the story, he made clear he wasn’t inside when the firemen supposedly lifted and moved him; he said the building that appeared on the verge of collapse was “not so far from us.”

There was indeed unfounded panic about One Liberty Plaza, though no proof Trump was swept up in it

In the days after the attack, there were fears that One Liberty Plaza would collapse even as city building officials said it was structurally sound; CNN reported that rescue workers and journalists were evacuated from the building on September 12, 2001, and The Washington Post reported that rescue workers were rushed away again on September 14, 2001.

Trump alluded to a similar situation when he was interviewed on September 13, 2001, telling NBC of workers at Ground Zero: “Every few minutes, a whistle would go off and everybody would just run, because you have all the buildings around it, which are in such a weakened state that people just don’t know. And so they just have to take off, and then they come back, and they’re working under 50-story buildings that you don’t know if they’re going to fall down. So it’s a terrible thing for the workers and it’s a terrible thing for the world, really.”

It is possible Trump was personally swept up in one of these moments of panic, too. But there’s no proof of that, and he didn’t tell NBC that he was talking about himself running.

There’s no public evidence Trump had a crew helping with the rescue effort

This time, Trump didn’t explicitly say that he or his workers helped to clear rubble or otherwise assisted with rescue and recovery at Ground Zero. But he has made such explicit claims in the past, and this time he immediately thanked “my people” after mentioning the work of rescue and recovery crews. So it’s worth noting that he has never presented evidence for his claims that he worked at Ground Zero or organized a group that worked at the site, let alone the 100-strong group of workers he has previously claimed.

“I spent many months there myself, and I never witnessed him,” Richard Alles, a retired New York Fire Department official who was a battalion chief on 9/11 and who attended a Trump White House event in 2019, told The New York Times in 2019 . Alles told PolitiFact in 2019 that if Trump had sent a crew of 100 workers, “there would be a record of it. Everybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services.”

The Associated Press reported in 2016, “News accounts from days just after 9/11 include references to Trump giving high-fives to police officers and volunteers on their way to the World Trade Center site.”

No basis to say One Liberty Plaza ‘still creaks’

Trump said, “The truth is it creaked a lot, it creaked. It still creaks.” There is no basis for this claim. The One Liberty Plaza office building reopened in October 2001 , less than two months after 9/11, and functions normally today.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

多年来，唐纳德·特朗普总统一直讲述着关于他在9·11事件当天及之后所见所闻的虚假或未经证实的故事。在9·11恐怖袭击25周年纪念日临近之际，特朗普周二在白宫又讲述了一个故事——他声称在袭击发生后的某个时刻，由于担心大楼即将倒塌，他被消防员抬走了。

特朗普最新的说法或许包含一些事实，他之前也曾讲述过类似的故事，但他并未提供任何证据。而且，他在周二出席纪念9/11事件救援人员的活动时所作的描述，充其量也只能说是误导性的。9/11事件发生时，他身处距离世贸中心数英里之外的地方，当天也没有被紧急疏散到世贸中心遗址附近的任何建筑物内。

当被问及特朗普的说法是否有证据支持，或者是否愿意提供更多关于所谓事件的细节时，白宫没有提供任何证据。

白宫周二在一封未署名的电子邮件中表示：“他当时只是个普通公民，他的所作所为并非全部都有记录。”当天晚些时候，发言人戴维斯·英格尔将矛头转向媒体。

“特朗普总统上午向在9·11恐怖袭击中为救人而牺牲的英勇救援人员致敬，并向他们的家人表达了敬意。总统讲述了他在恐怖袭击发生后，以及之后数日和数周内，亲身经历的这座城市的动荡——而那些日渐衰落的传统媒体竟然利用这一点来攻击他，这简直是耻辱，也再次印证了美国民众对媒体的信任度跌至历史新低的又一原因，”英格尔说道。

以下是特朗普周二的讲话内容以及事实真相。

袭击发生时以及当天晚些时候，特朗普都不在世贸中心附近。

特朗普没有具体说明消防员何时帮助了他，但他在讲述故事时开头就说自己“事发后立即”去了世贸中心遗址，这至少给人一种印象，即他在袭击当天被迅速转移到了安全地带。但这不可能，因为袭击发生时他身处数英里之外的曼哈顿中城特朗普大厦。一位特朗普集团前高管在2016年告诉Politico，特朗普那天并没有做什么特别的事情。

在 2016 年的一个版本中，特朗普声称消防员帮助他的那一刻发生在袭击发生“几天后”。

目前没有公开证据表明特朗普在袭击事件发生后不久曾出现在“美国钢铁大厦”。

特朗普曾表示，他担心美国钢铁大厦“会塌下来砸到我们”，还提到一名消防员说“得赶紧离开这里”，这些言论给人留下了他当时身处一栋不稳定的建筑物内的印象。但没有任何公开证据表明，在袭击发生后的几天里，他确实身处他所指的那栋大楼（2001年时名为自由广场一号，至今仍是如此）。袭击发生两天后，他在世贸中心遗址附近接受了户外采访。

在特朗普 2016 年讲述这个故事时，他明确表示，当消防员把他抬起来并转移时，他并不在里面；他说，那栋看起来即将倒塌的建筑物“离我们并不远”。

确实有人对自由广场一号大楼感到恐慌，尽管没有证据表明特朗普也受到了影响。

袭击发生后的几天里，人们担心自由广场一号大楼会倒塌，尽管市政建筑官员表示该建筑结构稳固；CNN 报道称，救援人员和记者于 2001 年 9 月 12 日从大楼中撤离，《华盛顿邮报》报道称，救援人员于 2001 年 9 月 14 日再次紧急撤离。

2001年9月13日，特朗普在接受NBC采访时也提到了类似的情况。他谈到世贸中心遗址的工人时说：“每隔几分钟，就会响起一声哨响，所有人都会赶紧跑，因为周围的建筑物都非常脆弱，人们根本不知道会发生什么。所以他们只能赶紧离开，然后再回来，在50层楼高的建筑物下面工作，你根本不知道这些建筑物会不会倒塌。这对工人来说是件可怕的事情，对整个世界来说也是如此。”

特朗普本人也可能曾被卷入这种恐慌之中。但目前尚无证据，而且他也没有告诉NBC他指的是自己参选。

目前没有公开证据表明特朗普曾派人协助救援行动。

这一次，特朗普并没有明确表示他或他的工作人员参与了世贸中心遗址的清理工作，也没有以其他方式协助救援和重建工作。但他过去曾做出过类似的明确表态，而且这次在提及救援和重建人员的工作后，他立即感谢了“我的人”。因此值得注意的是，他从未拿出任何证据来证明他曾在世贸中心遗址工作过，或者组织过任何在现场工作的团队，更不用说他之前声称的那支百人队伍了。

“我本人在那里待了好几个月，但我从未见过他，”理查德·阿莱斯（Richard Alles）在2019年接受《纽约时报》采访时表示。阿莱斯是纽约消防局的一名退休官员，9·11事件发生时担任营长，并于2019年参加了特朗普在白宫举办的活动。阿莱斯在2019年告诉PolitiFact，如果特朗普派了100名工作人员，“肯定会有记录。所有人都直接在警察、消防部门和紧急服务联合指挥官的监督下工作。”

美联社在 2016 年报道称，“9/11 事件发生后几天的新闻报道中提到，特朗普在前往世贸中心遗址的路上与警察和志愿者击掌。”

没有证据表明自由广场一号“仍然吱吱作响”。

特朗普说：“事实是，它吱吱作响，一直吱吱作响。现在还在吱吱作响。”这种说法毫无根据。自由广场一号办公楼于2001年10月重新开放，距离9·11事件不到两个月，如今仍在正常运营。