During 9/11 Ceremony, Trump Repeats Baseless Claim He Helped Out at Ground Zero

During a speech at the Pentagon on Wednesday commemorating the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, President Donald Trump once again repeated his baseless claim that he immediately brought workers to the ruins of the World Trade Center to help out.

Recounting that fateful day at Wednesday’s ceremony, the president said he “vividly” remembered what he was doing when he first heard the news that the Twin Towers had been hit.

“I was sitting at home watching a major business television show early that morning,” he said. “Jack Welch, the legendary head of General Electric, was about to be interviewed when all of a sudden they cut away. At first, there were different reports. ‘It was a boiler fire.’ But I knew that boilers aren’t at the top of a building. ‘It was a kitchen explosion in Windows of the World.’ Nobody really knew what happened. There was great confusion.”

After saying he looked out from his New York City building and saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center, the president then talked about how we supposedly went down to Ground Zero right away.

During his 9/11 commemoration speech, Trump once again claims that he went down to Ground Zero with "men who work for me" shortly after the attack to "try to help in any little way that we could."

There is no proof he ever did any of this. pic.twitter.com/5YWl5vIUED

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 11, 2019

“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,” he declared. “We were not alone. So many others were scattered around trying to do the same, they were all trying to help.”

There is no proof, however, that Trump ever went to the ruins with a group of hired men to assist with the recovery efforts. Two days after the attack, he told reporters that he had “hundreds of men inside working right now and we’re bringing down another 125 in a little while.”

First responders at the scene, meanwhile, have said they never witnessed a large group of workers hired by Trump to help with search and rescue or clearing rubble. The New York Times also reported that the entirety of the Trump Organization at the time only consisted of a little more than a dozen people, which likely would have made it impossible for Trump to send “hundreds” of his own men.

This is but one of many exaggerations, embellishments, unproven claims or just straight-up lies that Trump has made as it relates to the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent recovery. The president has also insisted that he lost “hundreds” of close friends and associates in the attacks, but hasn’t been able to name even one.