Donald Trump took his years of embellishing his role in the aftermath of 9/11 to another level Tuesday by suggesting firefighters pulled him from Ground Zero.
The wild remarks were made at a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks, as the White House honored a man who died saving people at the site.
Speaking on stage near a display of structural steel that had fallen from the towers that day, Trump veered into a story about his own alleged presence at the scene of the attack a quarter-century ago.
“The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down,” Trump began.
“We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen - big, strong guys, and 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.”
The comments appear to be an extension of a story Trump has told before, including during a head-scratching interview on Newsmax in 2021.
But it immediately sparked a backlash online, with some suggesting it sounded as though the president was claiming he had been pulled from the rubble as though he was one of the September 11 survivors.
“So many lies. It’s exhausting,” quipped artist Angu Walters.
“Our president is completely delusional,” said Huffpost senior White House correspondent S.V. Date.
“Don’t allow Trump to sully the 9/11 tragedy with his sick fantasies,” added Tara Setmayer, co-founder of the Seneca Project.
And golf writer and author Rick Reilly wrote on X: “I know this is BS because I was with him in his Trump Tower apt once. I was looking through his telescope. He said, “I watched the twin towers fall through that ... it’s solid gold.” Those were his exact words and not a single word about going down there to help."
Trump was in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan when hijacked planes struck on September 11, 2001.
The building is two and a half miles away from the World Trade Center or the U.S. Steel building he mentioned in his story. The former U.S. Steel Building is now One Liberty Plaza.
In several interviews that day, Trump also talked about the other building he owned in Manhattan—40 Wall Street–boasting that with the Twin Towers gone, his was now the tallest building in the city.
“I was looking out of a window from a building in midtown Manhattan directly at the World Trade Center, when I saw a second plane at tremendous speed go into the second tower,” he said in an interview after the attack.
“Soon after, I went down to Ground Zero with men who worked for me to try to help in any little way that we could.”
But there is no public evidence to show Trump went to the steel building, or that he was rushed out by firefighters.
He has repeatedly claimed for years that he was at Ground Zero with a large crew of his workers helping with the recovery in the days after 9/11, but people on site that day have said they never saw him or a Trump-organized crew.
The president’s comments came as the nation commemorates the anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Vice President JD Vance will attend the anniversary ceremony in New York, while Trump will speak at the Pentagon.
The New York Times reported last month that Trump decided to skip the official 25th-anniversary commemoration in New York City, in part because he wanted to deliver a speech, and event organizers informed his team that political remarks are not allowed.
However, he furiously rejected this and accused New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who co-authored the report, of being a “fake reporter” and “an unattractive person both inside and out.”
