Trump claims he was carried away by firefighters after 9/11 attacks

Saved by ‘two firemen, big, strong guys’

Trump spoke near a massive, 21-foot, nearly 17,000-pound steel beam recovered from the South Tower, which was on display for the 25th anniversary.

As he spoke to the crowd, Trump said the US Steel Building “was creaking, really creaking”.

“And we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down,” Trump said.

As he continued with the story, Trump gave two firefighters credit, claiming that he was saved by two “big strong firemen”.

“And I’ll never forget two firemen. 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 said.

“This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself,’ but they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down. American steel.”

The history with Trump and his 9/11 stories

This is not the first time that Trump has put himself at center stage of one of the worst disasters in American history, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.

In an interview with Fox on Sunday, Trump boasted about his role at helping in the aftermath at Ground Zero.

“I went down. I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers”, he said.

He added: “And I went down there very shortly thereafter, the following day. You couldn’t go down the same day, but like, the following day, very quickly afterwards, and we worked long and hard, but it was just so terrible, so hopeless.”

Firefighters in Brooklyn after the World Trade Center buildings collapsed September 11, 2001 after two hijacked airplanes slammed into the twin towers. Credit: Getty Images

After he witnessed the horror from 40 Wall Street, he conducted an interview with the US news station WWOR-TV where he made the claim that the building he owned was now New York’s tallest.

“I have a window that looks directly at the World Trade Center and I saw this huge explosion”, he said.

“I was with a group of people and I really couldn’t believe it – and even worse than that, for years, I’ve looked right directly at the building. I see the Empire State Building in the foreground and the World Trade Centre in the background, and now I’m looking at absolutely nothing. It’s just gone. And it’s just hard to believe.”

“40 Wall Street actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan and it was actually, before the World Trade Centre, was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Centre, it became known as the second tallest. And now it’s the tallest”, Trump said.

Policemen and firemen running away from the huge dust cloud caused as the World Trade Center's Tower One collapses. Credit: Getty Images

How much truth there is to Trump's claims revealed

According to CNN, Trump has for years told false or unproven stories about what he supposedly saw and did on 9/11 and soon after.

As the 25th anniversary of the terror attack approaches, CNN notes that it is possible there are elements of truth in Trump’s latest story, versions of which he has told before, however he hasn’t provided any evidence for it.

Parts of his Tuesday account of the events are misleading at best, as per CNN, as he was miles away from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and was not whisked out of any building near Ground Zero that day.

Firefighters walking towards one of the tower at the World Trade Center before it collapsed. Credit: Getty Images

Meanwhile, The White House did not provide any evidence for Trump’s story or more details about what supposedly happened.

In an unsigned Tuesday email, The White House said: “He was a private citizen at the time, not everything he did was documented.”

Trump, meanwhile, added in a social media post Tuesday night that “everything I said was exactly accurate.”