In President Donald Trump’s telling at a White House event on Tuesday, two firefighters bodily lifted him to safety from a site near an unstable building after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“And I’ll never forget,” Trump said, “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!'” Trump said.
His comments, at an event honoring emergency personnel killed on 9/11, appeared to be a new installment in a constantly evolving narrative that Trump has told over the years about his actions after the attacks.
It’s a story that has long featured the New York property tycoon as the hero, with variations on him taking workers down to Ground Zero.
But it is one that US media say is disputed by rescue officials present at the time.
The remarks also come amid a stir about Trump not being present as president in New York for the 25th anniversary of the attacks in which 2,977 people were killed.
Instead of being at the site where Al-Qaeda hijackers rammed planes into the World Trade Center towers, Trump will pay his respects on Friday at the Pentagon in Washington.
Trump and the White House have hotly denied reports that he chose the Pentagon because he was not allowed to deliver a speech at the 9/11 memorial.
“This is more Corrupt News, I’ve been to New York many times over the years, and no one ever speaks, it’s a ‘solemn ceremony!'” Trump said on his Truth Social network last week.
But it will still place the 80-year-old native New Yorker away from the main focus of the day’s commemorative events.
Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s four living predecessors Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as Republican George W Bush, who was president at the time of the attacks are all expected at “Ground Zero.”
Later on Friday, Trump is due to fly to Ireland where he will attend the Irish Open golf tournament at his family’s golf course this weekend.
– ‘More famous than me’ –
His absence from New York marks a contrast with Trump’s usual approach, which has been to put himself at the heart of the 9/11 story.
Two days after the attacks, Trump told reporters that he had been to Ground Zero and had sent 100 workers to the site to help recovery efforts. CNN and the New York Times said people present at the site disputed his account.
In the event on the White House Ellipse on Tuesday, where a steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center’s South Tower was on display, Trump gave a fresh account of his actions that day.
Trump said it had been a “beautiful morning” and that he had then seen a news alert on television, before looking out of his window “and I saw things that I never want to see again.”
He added that he was overseeing a building project and that he “took the whole crew down there right after this happened.”
A popular right-wing X account called Johnny Maga which US media have reported is run by a White House staffer weighed in to support Trump.
“It’s a shame people are politicizing a 9/11 memorial,” the account said on Tuesday.
At Tuesday’s event, Trump meanwhile presented the highest US civilian honor to the family of volunteer firefighter Welles Crowther, who was killed while helping lead people out of the South Tower.
Crowther, an equities trader, became known as the “man in the red bandana” after survivors told stories about a mysterious man wearing one over his nose and mouth.
“The Man in the Red Bandana. He’s become more famous than me, I don’t like it,” Trump said with a chuckle.
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