Donald Trump’s outlandish account of his role in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks reveals just how desperate the president is to be seen as a hero, according to a political analyst.
The 80-year-old president added another chapter to his long-running 9/11 mythology Tuesday as he spoke at a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks and honor those who died saving others.
Trump quickly found a way to put himself center stage, launching into a dubious account of being rescued by firefighters from a building just yards from the Twin Towers.
“The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down,” he rambled, without saying when the incident took place. “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.”
Trump was in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan at the time of the attacks. That building is two-and-a-half miles away from the World Trade Center and the U.S. Steel Building.
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 the attacks. But no public evidence shows Trump went to the steel building or that firefighters rushed him out.
“We know where Donald Trump was. He wasn’t anywhere near this,” political expert David Rothkopf said on The Daily Beast Podcast.
He noted that on the day the Twin Towers fell, Trump was boasting that the other building he owned in Manhattan—40 Wall Street—was now the tallest building in the city.
“That was his first response. And then he has been making up stories like this for the past 25 years, trying to say 9/11 was about me,” he added, noting Trump’s widely debunked claim that he saw Muslims in New Jersey celebrating after the planes hit.
“He’s made up all this stuff,” Rothkopf told Daily Beast Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty. “And you know, you think about it, and you realize this follows a pattern.”
“If Donald Trump didn’t have stolen valor, he would have no valor at all. This is a draft dodger who tries to sell himself as a warrior. And it is a man without a hint of humane, decent, courageous qualities who tries to put himself in the middle of all of these things and suggest that he was the hero.”
Rothkopf added that he was “not surprised” but “disgusted” that “not one of the so-called... patriotic Republicans who wrap themselves in the flag every day did not attack Trump for this lie in the way they would have had any Democrat said anything like this.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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