US president has repeatedly exaggerated or made false claims about the al-Qaida attacks that struck his home city of New York almost 25 years ago. Donald Trump frequently invokes 11 September 2001, the day al-Qaida carried out its devastating attacks on his home city of New York almost 25 years ago. But his recollections of the attacks have repeatedly been marked by exaggerations and falsehoods – including an anecdote he recounted this week at a White House ceremony commemorating the attacks that appears to be untrue.

Here are six occasions on which Trump has stretched or distorted the truth about 9/11, from the aftermath of the attacks to his second term as president.
1. Claiming the attacks made his building the tallest in downtown New York
Shortly after the attacks, Trump told a local news anchor in a telephone interview that the destruction of the World Trade Center – previously New York City’s tallest building – had made his 40 Wall Street property the tallest building in downtown Manhattan.

“I mean, 40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And it was actually before the World Trade Center was the tallest,” Trump claimed. “And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest. And now it’s the tallest.”
That was not the case. 70 Pine Street, about a block away, was taller.

2. Claiming he helped clear the rubble
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he helped with the recovery operation following the collapse of the World Trade Center.
“Everyone who helped clear the rubble, and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit,” he said at a campaign stop in 2016.
The claim echoed an earlier comment he made shortly after the attacks, when he told a German broadcaster: “We’ll have a couple hundred people down here” to help with the cleanup.
But in 2019, PolitiFact interviewed a New York City Fire Department battalion chief who said he did not recall Trump sending any workers to the site.

3. Claiming Muslims celebrated the attacks
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that “thousands and thousands” of Muslim Americans “were cheering” in Jersey City, New Jersey, on the day of the attacks.
Despite numerous fact-checks, no evidence has emerged to substantiate the claim.

4. Falsely claiming Ilhan Omar danced on 9/11
In September 2019, Trump retweeted a video purporting to show Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Muslim and the first Somali American elected to Congress, dancing on the anniversary of the attacks.

“The new face of the Democrat Party!” Trump wrote while sharing the video. But CBS News reported that Omar had been dancing at an event organised by the Congressional Black Caucus, which was not held on 11 September.

5. Claiming he predicted the attacks
In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump mentioned al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as one of “a bewildering series of smaller crises” facing the United States. Bin Laden was already known to Americans at the time. In 1998, al-Qaida had orchestrated the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. That did not stop Trump from claiming in 2018 that the US “should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did”, adding: “I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center.”

6. Fumbling the facts about firefighters
At a White House ceremony on Tuesday honouring emergency workers who responded to the attacks, Trump said firefighters had once carried him to safety because they feared a lower Manhattan skyscraper was about to collapse.Trump said that when he and a group of workers visited lower Manhattan shortly after the attacks, two firefighters grabbed him under the arms and carried him away after becoming concerned about the stability of One Liberty Plaza, formerly known as the US Steel Building.

“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.”

PolitiFact noted that Trump had previously told a similar version of the story, including in a Fox News interview broadcast earlier this week. The account, however, appears to be exaggerated.
While concerns about the stability of One Liberty Plaza did lead to the evacuation of at least one nearby building the day after the attacks, there is no evidence that Trump was present.
His claim that he brought workers to the site is also unsupported.

Culled From TheGuardian.com