Fact Check: Did Donald Trump Help Clear Rubble on 9/11?

Former President Donald Trump has used his 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign to make a number of misleading and false claims, suggesting the U.S. sent Iran $6 billion in a hostage deal, that there were no terrorist attacks while he was president, and that his uncle was the longest-serving professor at MIT.

Trump leads rival Nikki Haley in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and the two are set to face off in the South Carolina primary on February 24.

In a video that was widely shared on social media, Trump also appeared to claim that he helped with the recovery efforts at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001.

The Claim

A post on X, formerly Twitter, by user @highbrow_nobrow, posted on February 12, viewed 1.3 million views, included a video of Trump in which he said: “Everyone who helped clear the rubble, and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit, but I want to tell you those people were amazing. Clearing the rubble, trying to find additional lives, you didn’t know what was going to come down on all of us, and they handled it.”

User @highbrow_nobrow wrote: “Trump claims he helped clear rubble and search for survivors on 9/11.@GoAngelo.”

The Facts

The video is from April 2016, of Trump speaking at a New York rally as he campaigned against then-Republican presidential candidate and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

To this day, there has been no evidence that Trump helped clear rubble or helped find survivors on 9/11.

While Trump did visit Ground Zero in the days after the attack, analysis of his comments then and from reports at the site have not led to any evidence that he helped with the recovery.

Trump did tell a German television reporter two days afterward that “he had a lot of men” helping.

“We have over 100 and we have about 125 coming,” he said. “So we’ll have a couple hundred people down here. And they are very brave and what they’re doing is amazing. And we will be involved in some form in helping to reconstruct.”

PolitiFact, USA Today and Poynter said they were unable to verify whether he paid workers to help or that he was there, either.

Richard Alles, a New York Fire Department battalion chief on 9/11, told PolitiFact that he had no knowledge of Trump being at Ground Zero or sending hundreds of workers to help.

“I was there for several months—I have no knowledge of his being down there,” Alles said, adding that “there would be a record of it.”

“Everybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services.

“Is there a chance he was ever down there by himself and I didn’t know it? It’s possible, but I know of no one who ever witnessed him there.”

Newsweek has reached out to a media representative for Trump via email for comment.

The Ruling

False.

There is no evidence that Trump cleared rubble on 9/11. Trump told media that he had hired hundreds of workers to help with the rescue and clean-up efforts. However, investigations found no evidence that independently supported the claim, either. A fire battalion chief has told fact-check journalists he had “no knowledge of [Trump] being down there.”

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team

Related Articles

Start your unlimited Newsweek trial