Trump Keeps Lying About 9/11

Trump lied yet again about 9/11 yesterday, saying, “Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers and other first responders,” he said. “And I was down there also. But I am not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.”

Trump’s statement-- suggesting that he deserves some measure of credit for showing up at the site-- echoes previous remarks he’s made about Sept. 11, including at an April 2016 campaign stop in Buffalo, New York, where he told his supporters that he assisted with recovery efforts.

“Everyone who helped clear the rubble ― and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit-- but I want to tell you: Those people were amazing,” he said. “Clearing the rubble. Trying to find additional lives. You didn’t know what was going to come down on all of us--  and they handled it.”

The vague implication that he was lending a hand, even placing himself in harm’s way, remains completely unsubstantiated.

According to an excerpt from local paper Newsday, Trump was interviewed from the 9/11 scene, having been quoted in a story that ran three days after 9/11:

The workers are so worn out that they barely glance at the sight of Donald Trump, every hair in place and impeccably dressed in a black suit, pressed white shirt and red tie, walking into the plaza with his cellular phone to his ear.

“No, no. The building’s gone,” he says into the phone.

Trump also spoke to a German TV reporter on September 13 and can be seen standing in Lower Manhattan. While he said in the interview that he had “a lot of men” helping out-- roughly 225 total-- PolitiFact was unable to corroborate that claim after researching it earlier this year.

At a Columbus, Ohio, rally on November 2015, Trump claimed that he watched from his apartment as people leapt from the crumbling towers and that he witnessed the second plane coming in. Since Trump Tower is located in midtown, more than four miles away from where the World Trade Center stood, it’s highly unlikely Trump could have seen the destruction from his window. 

Trump also made what many saw as a fraudulent claim for $150,000 in federal recovery grants intended for small businesses impacted by the September 11 attacks, a New York Daily News investigation discovered, even though his properties were not damaged.

But none of these come close to the worst lie Trump has made about 9/11.  During a February 2016 campaign debate, Trump claimed that "I lost hundreds of friends at 9/11", but his campaign did not provide a single name.   The next day, in an interview with Chuck Todd, Trump changed his story to "I lost many, many friends."  In the years since, Trump has never substantiated these claims.  The truth is that Trump lost ZERO friends at 9/11.