Since the days immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. President Donald Trump, a native of New York City, has made numerous claims about what he saw that day and his involvement in the recovery efforts.
One such claim Trump has repeatedly made is his assertion that he was at Ground Zero within days of 9/11 and that he sent workers to the recovery effort at the site of the World Trade Center.
In September 2026, multiple X users debated the veracity of the claim. For example, one user (archived) wrote, “There’s no proof Trump sent a large group of construction workers to Ground Zero.”
Other popular (archived) posts (archived) said there was no evidence Trump, himself, went to Ground Zero and helped with recovery efforts.
Another X post (archived) alternatively claimed, “President Trump is dropping VIDEO PROOF for every Fake News outlet lying to millions that he was nowhere near Ground Zero after 9/11.”
(X)
Many Snopes readers searched the site to find out if Trump’s claims were true.
A couple of days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Trump told multiple news media outlets that he sent at least 100 workers to Ground Zero to help pull people and bodies out of the rubble, with 125 to 150 more on the way. However, Snopes has never been able to identify any public evidence that crews he hired helped in the immediate recovery of the 9/11 attacks. Since we cannot independently confirm with certainty whether Trump had crews on site somewhere, we are leaving this claim unrated.
Footage of interviews Trump conducted in the immediate days after 9/11 placed him within blocks of Ground Zero. Trump said in those interviews that he visited Ground Zero to encourage the workers he said he brought to assist with clearing rubble at the site. It was not possible to find evidence showing Trump helped clear the pile of debris at Ground Zero, as some posts disputed.
In a phone call with a local news media station immediately after the planes crashed into the Twin Towers, Trump said he watched the towers fall from the window of one of his buildings.
Trump’s September 2026 remarks
On Sept. 8, 2026, in a post on Truth Social (archived), Trump continued to maintain that he was at Ground Zero with construction workers after 9/11, clarifying that it was “obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter”:
The Failing New York Magazine wrote a story that I wasn’t down at the World Trade Center after the Tragedy of September 11th, because nobody saw me there. Well, I don’t think I would be the first thing on anyone’s mind but, I was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter, with a large group of Construction Workers.
He then added he “was there as soon as the Law allowed.”
The president was referencing a New York Magazine article disputing his comments about where he was on the day of, and the days following, the attacks.
Trump also made this claim (archived) in a Fox News interview two days prior, in which he added the additional context that he was constructing a new building in New York City. This is the reason, according to Trump at a 9/11 anniversary event on Sept. 8, why he had workers who he could bring to the rubble of the World Trade Center:
I was building a big building in New York and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened and they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people. It wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest.
What Trump told the media in 2001
Trump spoke to the media multiple times a few days after 9/11. On Sept. 13, he told a German news channel, that he had more than 100 men down at the site of the World Trade Center and more than 125 on their way. According to the German-speaking reporter, the interview was conducted a few blocks from Ground Zero.
That same day, NBC News interviewed Trump at what appeared to be the same location as his interview with the German news channel. Trump said he had “hundreds of men inside working right now” and was bringing down another 125.
PBS has a recording of another Trump interview from Sept. 13, in which Trump said he had 100 workers helping to dig people and bodies out of the rubble at the World Trade Center, with another 100 to 150 workers “coming.” He told PBS that those workers were “digging out” at the site.
In another interview from that day, Trump told reporters his workers had been at Ground Zero “for about a day and a half.” He said they were men from his company and that a couple had gotten hurt while working at the site. He also said he was just down at Ground Zero and was there to support them.
The evidence
When Snopes first researched this claim in 2018, we spoke to Richard Alles, a retired deputy chief with the New York City Fire Department, who later served as director of 9/11 community affairs for the law firm Barasch McGarry Salzman and Penson. Alles said that in all his time he spent at Ground Zero as a New York City Fire Department battalion chief, starting 20 minutes after the buildings collapsed, he never saw a large group of workers whom Trump had hired at the site assisting with search and rescue efforts. “This is the first I’m hearing of it,” Alles said via phone call. “There would have been no need for that. Between police, fire and the construction crews, we had it all covered.”
Alles added that the construction crews he saw at Ground Zero helping rescue workers were from the trade unions and were not hired by Trump.
John Feal, founder of the 9/11 first responder health advocacy nonprofit the FealGood Foundation, told Snopes at the time that he responded to Ground Zero on Sept. 12, 2001, as a construction demolitions expert and that he didn’t see evidence of hundreds of workers hired by Trump at the site.
The Trump Organization was building in New York City in 2001, according to the Skyscraper Center database on skyscrapers. In fact, it finished a series of residential buildings in the city at Trump Place between 1998 and 2004. He was also building the Trump World Tower residential building near the United Nations Headquarters that year.
However, it was not possible to find verifiable information about how many people, either directly employed by Trump or contracted to work on one of the Trump Organization’s projects, were working on these buildings and in New York City at the time.
A New York Times fact-check from July 2019 referenced Timothy O’Brien, the author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,” who reportedly said the Trump Organization numbered “a little bit over a dozen people” at the time of the attacks, making it impossible to send as many workers to the relief effort as Trump claimed.
Neither the White House nor the Trump Organization responded to Snopes’ requests for corroborating evidence in 2018. This lack of response is consistent with past attempts by Politifact, The Washington Post, The New York Times and Politifact again to reach out to the White House and/or the Trump Organization to corroborate evidence of Trump’s claims.
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