Did Trump say he owned ‘tallest’ building in downtown Manhattan after 9/11?

Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a claim (archived) circulated online that Donald Trump, then a New York City real estate developer, said after the attacks that he now owned the tallest building in downtown Manhattan.

For example, the self-described “pro-democracy” media outlet MeidasTouch wrote in a Facebook post:

In a television interview on the day of the attacks, Trump notably bragged how the destruction of the World Trade Center affected the ranking of his building at 40 Wall Street, claiming it was now the tallest building in downtown Manhattan.

Similar claims about Trump’s alleged comments following the 9/11 attacks circulated on X (archived here and here) and Instagram (archived). Snopes readers also contacted us to ask about the claim.

Reminder: Donald Trump’s immediate reaction to the 9/11 attacks was to brag that his building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed. pic.twitter.com/iAkUeGafG9

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 7, 2026

Trump did tell (time code 2:05, archived) a reporter soon after the 9/11 attacks that 40 Wall Street, which the Trump Organization still owns, was “the tallest” building in downtown Manhattan. As such, we’ve rated this quote as correctly attributed to Trump.

Whether Trump’s comments amounted to bragging, as some people online claimed, is open to interpretation. 

Fox 5 New York posted a video of Trump’s phone interview with WWOR-TV reporter Alan Marcus on YouTube in 2016. Trump made the claim about owning the tallest building in downtown Manhattan after Marcus asked if 40 Wall Street had sustained any damage during the attacks. The exchange went as follows (time code 01:43 — emphasis ours):

Marcus: Donald, you have one of the landmark buildings down in the financial district, 40 Wall Street, did you have any damage or did you know what’s happened down there?

Trump: Well, it was an amazing phone call I made. 40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And it was, actually before the World Trade Center, was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest. And now it’s the tallest.

During the 2001 interview, Marcus also asked Trump how he would have handled 9/11 if he were president given that he had considered running for the office the year before (time code 4:14). Trump said he would have taken a “very, very tough line” against “the group of people that did this.”

In an interview with Politico in 2016, Marcus reportedly said that Trump’s remark about 40 Wall Street was “Donald being Donald.” Marcus added, “He is the brand manager of Trump, and he is going to tout that brand, and he does it reflexively.”

Trump’s claim that 40 Wall Street was the tallest building in downtown Manhattan following the attacks was incorrect. The nearby 952-foot tall 70 Pine Street skyscraper, which was also part of the Manhattan skyline in 2001, is 26 feet taller than 40 Wall Street.

For further reading, Snopes previously investigated whether Trump attacked the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York for telling him he would not be allowed to speak at its 25th anniversary commemoration. 

Snopes’ archives contributed to this report.

Sources