Fred Trump III, the nephew of President Donald Trump, addressed his uncle’s unsupported claims that firefighters carried him away from a building that they feared would collapse in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“I try not to comment personally about my uncle, but his claim that he brought a crew of workers to help at [ground zero] so offends me that I need to speak out,” Fred Trump III wrote in an X post.
During an event in Washington honoring 9/11 first responders, the president regurgitated his claim of bringing along “a lot of my men” to ground zero to aid in the recovery efforts around the World Trade Center while he was “building a big building” nearby.
While there, he said, the U.S. Steel Building began “creaking” (as it “still” does), leading him to fear that it was “coming down on top of us.”
That’s when two “big, strong” firefighters swooped in, according to Trump.
“They grabbed me under the arms, said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up … and they started running with me,” Trump said.
Trump did, in fact, give interviews near ground zero on Sept. 13, two days after the twin towers collapsed. But Fred Trump III, the brother of the president’s frequent familial critic Mary Trump, said his uncle’s “crew” would have been “secretarial and accounting employees” from Trump Tower.
“I knew many of them, and pretty sure they were not capable physically to help (if they could, I am sure they would try),” the president’s nephew wrote.
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Fred Trump III added that one of the original engineers behind the U.S. Steel Building, which is now known as One Liberty Plaza, is “ironically” the “grandfather of a very close friend” of his.
“The [building] was built strong,” he stated, before noting that he also has ties to an engineer who was swiftly called upon to inspect the building in the wake of the WTC attack.
“While people were originally concerned, it was eventually cleared for occupancy- not creaking and ready to fall,” he wrote. (Note: One Liberty Plaza reopened in late October 2001 and there’s no evidence, as Trump claimed, that it “still” creaks.)
“I hope this brings some truth to that story,” the president’s nephew concluded.
Trump slammed New York magazine for referring to his 9/11 recollection as a “weird lie” on Tuesday, and stressed on his Truth Social platform that he “was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter.”
