(Photo : Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
SHANKSVILLE, PA - SEPTEMBER 11:President Donald J. Trump waves to supporters after delivering a speech at the Flight 93 National Memorial commemorating the 17th Anniversary of the crash of Flight 93 and the September 11th terrorist attacks on September 11, 2018 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The nation is marking the seventeenth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, when the terrorist group al-Qaeda flew hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people.
United States President Donald Trump was reportedly at Ground Zero two days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan.
Search and Rescue
A meme underscores President Trump's 2001 comments regarding the search for survivors by hundreds of workers he paid for in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In 2019, at the 18th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Trump asserted, "Soon after, I went down to Ground Zero with men who worked for me to try to help in any little way that we could ... We were not alone. So many others were scattered around trying to do the same. They were all trying to help," reported NPR.
However, according to Richard Alles, battalion chief of the New York Fire Department at the time of the attacks, who spent numerous months in the smoking, choking ruins at Ground Zero, "I was there for several months -- I have no knowledge of his being down there."
Trump Marks 9/11 on Air Force One
Aboard the Air Force One, the president recently commemorated the 19th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with a moment of silence.
He traveled to Shanksville, Pennsylvania to be in the presence of a scaled-back version of the yearly Flight 93 memorial service on Friday, reported Greater Kashmir.
Pentagon Remarks
Trump commemorated thousands of fatalities as aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks during remarks at the Pentagon last year.
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Claiming he helped in the aftermath of the terror attacks, he stated, "I was looking out of a window from a building at Midtown Manhattan directly at the World Trade Center when I saw a second plane at a tremendous speed go into the second tower, reported USA Today.
He added, "It was then that I realized the world was going to change. I was no longer going to be, and it could never, ever be that innocent place that I thought it was."
President Trump has told varying versions of the narrative of sighting the second jet hitting the World Trade Center in 2001.
He often remarks that he was in Trump Tower located four miles from the World Trade Center. According to his more recent remarks, he was inside a Midtown Manhattan building after reportedly being at home (in the Trump Tower) when the first plane struck.
The First Official Record
The initial official record of the US President at Ground Zero dates from Sept. 13, 2001 which was two days following the terrorist attacks.
Snopes' fact-checkers contacted two men greatly involved in Ground Zero and they remarked that they did not witness evidence of Trump or his men in the area after the attacks.
'Spent a Lot of Time' With 9/11 Responders
When Trump signed into legislation a bill that would permanently provide financial aid for emergency workers who became ill after Sept. 11, 2001, he revived the old claim that he was at the site of Ground Zero along with police officers and firefighters.
According to John Feal, founder of the 9/11 first responder health advocacy non-profit the FealGood Foundation and who also responded to Ground Zero on the 12th of September in 2001 as a construction demolitions expert, he did not witness evidence of hundreds of workers hired by Trump at Ground Zero after the 9/11 incident.
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