Ep 123 - Back Porch Files: Where Was Donald Trump on 9/11?

Twenty-five years ago, almost 3,000 people went to work, got on airplanes, reported for duty, sat down at their desks — and never came home. September 11, 2001 became one of those dates permanently burned into the memories of people old enough to remember it. We remember where we were. We remember what we were doing. We remember the moment we realized something was terribly wrong.

Donald Trump was at Ground Zero after 9/11 — but 25 years later, some of the most dramatic parts of his story still don’t come with receipts.

I certainly do. I was getting ready for work that morning, listening to Howard Stern, when they started talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. At first, like a lot of people, I didn’t understand what was happening. Was it an accident? A small plane? What the hell was going on? I went to the television, turned on CNN, and watched the rest of that morning unfold in real time. The second plane. The Pentagon. The towers collapsing. The incomprehensible realization that America was under attack.

Then came the firefighters, police officers and EMTs. The ironworkers, construction crews, recovery workers and volunteers. People who ran toward danger while everyone else was trying to escape it. People who spent days, weeks and months working in an environment that would eventually make many of them terribly sick. September 11 gave us thousands upon thousands of stories of tragedy, sacrifice and extraordinary courage.

And apparently, it also gave us the story of Donald Trump.

Trump has spent years describing his own place in the aftermath of September 11. Some of what he says is unquestionably true. Some of it is possible but cannot be independently verified. Some of it is unsupported by the available evidence. And taken together over a quarter-century, his accounts reveal something fascinating: Donald Trump seems to have become an increasingly important character in Donald Trump’s story of 9/11.

So rather than simply declaring that Trump lied about everything, let’s do something harder — and more useful. Let’s look at what he actually said, compare it with what we can actually document, and let the record do the heavy lifting.

On September 11 itself, Trump gave a telephone interview to WWOR television in New York. He described watching the disaster from Midtown Manhattan and communicating with people connected to his downtown properties. Nothing in that contemporaneous interview establishes that he was at Ground Zero that day. To be fair, that does not necessarily contradict his current account. Trump now says he could not get downtown on September 11.

That WWOR interview nevertheless provided an early glimpse of something distinctly Trumpian. Asked whether his building at 40 Wall Street had been damaged, Trump explained that it had once been the second-tallest building downtown, had fallen in the rankings after the World Trade Center was built, and was now, after the towers had been destroyed, the tallest. It wasn’t. 70 Pine Street was taller. But the factual error is almost less striking than the impulse: while the scale of the catastrophe was still unfolding, Donald Trump found his way to the subject of Donald Trump’s real estate.

The more important question comes the next day — at least according to Trump. Speaking in September 2026, he said that he went downtown “the following day” with construction people and that “we worked long and hard.” “The following day” means September 12, 2001. That is unusually specific.

But the earliest known photographic and video evidence placing Trump near Ground Zero dates to September 13. That does not prove he wasn’t there on September 12. Absence of a photograph is not proof of absence, particularly in the chaos of Lower Manhattan after the attacks. Trump’s September 12 claim therefore shouldn’t be called false on the evidence currently available. It should be called what it is: unverified.

September 13 is different. Trump really was there. There is video. There are photographs. There are interviews. He spoke with reporters near Ground Zero and described what he had seen. Anyone claiming Donald Trump never went near the site after September 11 is simply wrong. He did. Giving him that fact matters, because if we are going to scrutinize the parts of his story that are harder to substantiate, we have to acknowledge the parts that are documented. Give him every fact the record gives him. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And on September 13, Trump made another remarkable claim. He told German television that he had more than 100 men working there, another roughly 125 coming, and expected to have “a couple hundred people” involved. In other interviews that day, he made similar statements about workers connected to him participating in the recovery effort.

That is significant because this particular claim was not invented decades later. Donald Trump was saying it two days after the attacks. But a contemporaneous claim is evidence that somebody made the claim. It is not necessarily independent evidence that the underlying event happened exactly as described.

Two hundred construction workers are not two guys helping move a barricade. That is an operation. Operations leave footprints. Who were these people? Which Trump company employed them? Who supervised them? Where were they assigned? What work did they perform? Were there payroll records? Contractor records? Photographs? First-person accounts? Records from the agencies coordinating work around Ground Zero?

Those questions have been asked repeatedly, and independent documentation confirming a Trump workforce on the scale he described has not surfaced. Former FDNY Battalion Chief Richard Alles has said he knew of no Trump contingent numbering more than 100 people and that an operation of that size should have left records because recovery activity was being coordinated. On the other hand, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik has said Trump visited Ground Zero numerous times, sometimes without cameras, to encourage workers. That testimony deserves to be included too. It supports Trump having visited and encouraged people. It does not independently identify those claimed 100, 125 or 200 workers.

So the worker story remains in a peculiar place: Trump unquestionably told it in 2001, but the operation he described has never been independently substantiated at the scale he claimed.

Then there is a separate question that too often gets mixed together with the worker claim: Did Donald Trump himself actually work in the recovery effort?

In 2016, Trump said of the people who helped clear the rubble, “I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit.” In 2019, while speaking alongside 9/11 first responders, he said he had been down there and had spent “a lot of time” with them. And now, in 2026, he says he went downtown with construction workers and “we worked long and hard.”

That word matters: we.

In normal English, “we worked long and hard” suggests that the speaker was one of the people doing the work. But what exactly did Trump do? Did he move rubble? Participate in organized recovery work? Work alongside construction crews? There is photographic and video evidence showing him in the area, talking to reporters and observing what was happening. There is not comparable evidence showing Donald Trump personally performing physical recovery work. Fact-checkers who have examined the claim have been unable to establish that he did.

That does not make it impossible. It makes it unsupported by the available evidence. There is an important difference.

Then we get to perhaps the most cinematic part of the Trump story: the building that almost collapsed and the firefighters who supposedly carried Donald Trump to safety.

Trump has described being near One Liberty Plaza — formerly known as the U.S. Steel Building — when people feared it might collapse. Here, part of the story checks out extraordinarily well. There really were serious concerns about One Liberty Plaza. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, located nearby, has documented that employees were evacuated late on September 12 because of concern that the building might come down. The danger was real. The evacuation was real.

And that matters, because Trump’s story should not be ridiculed simply because it sounds dramatic. The underlying emergency genuinely happened. The question is whether Donald Trump was part of it in the way he now describes.

On September 8, 2026, Trump tol

d a Tunnel to Towers event that two “big firemen” grabbed him under the arms, literally lifted him up and started running with him because they feared the nearby building would collapse. It is quite an image. It is also the kind of story that invites some remarkably straightforward questions.

Who were the firefighters?

Have either of them ever been identified? Did either one ever tell the story? Was anybody else there? Is there a photograph? A contemporaneous report? A first responder who remembers watching two firefighters physically carrying the already-famous Donald Trump through Lower Manhattan?

As of now, independent corroboration for that specific rescue story has not emerged. Reporting this week notes that Trump has told shorter versions of the dangerous-building story before, so it would be inaccurate to say the entire anecdote suddenly appeared in 2026. But the version now being told is extraordinarily vivid: two firefighters, under the arms, literally lifting him off the ground and running with him. The emergency is documented. Donald Trump’s starring role inside that emergency is not.

And when you step back and place these accounts beside one another, a pattern begins to emerge. Not a perfectly neat progression — historical memory rarely works that way, and some details appeared earlier than others — but a pattern nonetheless.

In 2001, Trump talked primarily about workers he said he had sent downtown. By 2016, he was saying he had “helped a little bit.” By 2019, he had spent “a lot of time” there with first responders. In 2026, he says he went down the following day and “we worked long and hard.” And now we have the vivid story of two firefighters physically carrying him away from danger.

I cannot prove that every one of those developments represents deliberate embellishment. Memory changes. People conflate things. Details get fuzzy. But what is hard to ignore is that Donald Trump seems to become increasingly central — and increasingly heroic — in Donald Trump’s telling of the story.

And this is not the only time his recollections of September 11 have failed to line up neatly with the record. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump insisted he had watched “thousands and thousands” of people in Jersey City celebrating while the towers fell. Extensive reviews of contemporary reporting found no evidence of anything remotely on that scale. He has also given later descriptions of things he says he personally saw from Trump Tower that were more detailed than what he described in his September 11 interview. And there is that false claim about 40 Wall Street becoming the tallest building downtown.

None of those things proves the firefighter story is false. None proves the workers did not exist. None proves Donald Trump deliberately fabricated his September 12 visit. What they do establish is that his recollections of September 11 have not always survived scrutiny particularly well. That makes asking for evidence now not only reasonable, but necessary.

And before we close this file, Donald Trump needs to leave the center of the frame. Because September 11 does not belong to him.

It belongs to the people who died. The families who lost husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. The firefighters who climbed those stairs. The police officers and Port Authority officers who ran toward danger. The EMTs and paramedics. The ironworkers. The construction crews. The volunteers. The recovery workers who spent months breathing in toxic air and dust and who would pay for it years later with damaged bodies and shortened lives.

Their place in history does not require speculation. We know who they were. We know where they were. We have names, photographs, records, witnesses, medical histories and memorials.

They do not need mythology.

September 11 already had heroes. Nobody needed to audition for the part twenty-five years later.

So where does that leave Donald Trump’s story? We can document that he was near Ground Zero on September 13. We can document that he was already claiming in 2001 that workers connected to him were helping. We can document that there really were fears that One Liberty Plaza could collapse.

We cannot presently substantiate his specific claim that he was there on September 12. We cannot independently confirm the claimed workforce of 100 to 200 people at the scale he described. We cannot establish that Trump personally performed substantial recovery work. And we cannot independently corroborate the story of two firefighters literally picking him up and carrying him to safety.

Maybe every one of those things happened.

Maybe somewhere out there are a couple hundred construction workers nobody has managed to identify in twenty-five years. Maybe records exist that nobody has located. Maybe two firefighters once scooped up Donald Trump and ran with him through Lower Manhattan and somehow neither became part of the public story.

That is possible.

Twenty-five years is just a very long time to go without producing a receipt.

And this is where I have to be careful. I cannot tell you that Donald Trump is knowingly lying about every unsupported part of this story. I cannot crawl inside his head and prove he deliberately exaggerated his role. That would be a serious accusation.

And really, what kind of person would do something like that?

What kind of person would take one of the most horrifying days in American history — nearly 3,000 people dead, firefighters running into burning buildings, police officers and EMTs trying desperately to save lives, construction crews digging through wreckage, families waiting for people who would never come home — and decide the story needed just a little more of him?

What kind of person would take his own role in that tragedy and polish it over the years? A little more involvement. A little more work. A little more danger. A little more heroism. Until he was no longer merely a famous businessman who visited Ground Zero, but someone who worked long and hard alongside the responders and was literally carried to safety by firefighters?

That would be grotesque. It would represent narcissism on a level that is almost difficult to comprehend.

So no, I am not telling you I have proved that is what Donald Trump did.

I am telling you what he said. I am telling you what the historical record supports. And I am telling you what the historical record still does not support. You can decide for yourself what explanation makes the most sense.

Because this is bigger than whether Donald Trump touched a piece of rubble twenty-five years ago. It is about whether history matters enough to tell it truthfully — particularly history purchased at such an enormous human cost.

The real story of September 11 was already terrible enough. The courage was already extraordinary enough. The people who died, the people who ran toward danger, the people who searched, rescued, recovered, suffered and endured do not need anyone adding mythology to their history.

They deserve the truth.

And on September 11, of all days, the truth should be enough.

SOURCES

PolitiFact — Ground Zero construction crews, firefighter hoist: Fact-checking Trump’s 9/11 response stories — https://politifact.com/article/2026/sep/08/donald-trump-9-11-response-firemen-ground-zero/

Roll Call Factbase — Donald Trump WWOR interview, September 11, 2001 — https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-interview-wwor-interview-september-11-2001/

Roll Call Factbase — Donald Trump Deutsche Welle/N24 interview near Ground Zero, September 13, 2001 — https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-interview-deutsche-welle-september-13-2001/

The Washington Post — Donald Trump: “I helped a little bit” with clearing rubble at Ground Zero — https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/19/donald-trump-i-helped-a-little-bit-with-clearing-rubble-at-ground-zero/

The Washington Post Video — Trump: “I helped a little bit” with clearing rubble on 9/11 — https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-i-helped-a-little-bit-with-clearing-rubble-on-911/2016/04/19/ab9b02e2-0645-11e6-bfed-ef65dff5970d_video.html

PolitiFact — Donald Trump says he spent a lot of time with 9/11 responders — https://politifact.com/article/2019/jul/30/donald-trump-says-he-spent-lot-time-911-responders/

Federal Reserve Bank of New York — About the Building: September 11 aftermath and One Liberty Plaza evacuation — https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/about_the_building.html

Federal Reserve Bank of New York — 2001 Annual Report, documenting the September 12 evacuation over fears One Liberty Plaza might collapse — https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/aboutthefed/annual/annual01/report.pdf

FactCheck.org — Trump, Carson on 9/11 “Celebrations” — https://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/trump-carson-on-911-celebrations/