Trump brutally fact-checked over tale of 9/11 heroism: 'Give me a break'
President Donald Trump is again rewriting his 9/11 history with claims that he worked "long and hard" on recovery, a story debunked for years.
Days ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Trump told Fox News host Trey Gowdy that he rushed downtown after the towers fell and joined the effort with his own construction crews. Progressive political commentator David Pakman fact-checked the account on a Monday episode of his podcast and called it a lie that Trump "seemingly cannot get away from because he needs it to fuel his massive ego."
In the interview with Gowdy, Trump described watching the attacks unfold from an apartment and insisted he knew it was a plane rather than a "boiler" or a "missile." Trump then claimed he sent workers to the site the following day.
"I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers, and I went down there very shortly thereafter, the following day," Trump said. "You couldn't go down the same day, but like the following day very, very quickly afterwards, and we worked long and hard."
Pakman was blunt about the payoff line, saying, "Long and hard. Trump is working long and hard. Give me a break." Pakman noted that the "evidence has never ever, ever materialized."
The record shows only that Trump "visited the area around ground zero in the days after the attack," Pakman said. On September 13, 2001, Trump claimed he "had more than a hundred workers in there" with "a hundred more coming." New York Fire Department Chief Richard Alles later disputed any such deployment by Trump.
"We would have had documentation of that," Alles said. "All the crews were operating under police and fire department supervision."
Pakman said there is "zero record" of Trump sending workers and "zero evidence" of the heroism narrative, adding that news organizations trying to verify it came up empty.
He also pointed to Trump's real reaction in the days afterward, when Trump phoned a TV show to note his 40 Wall Street property had become "the tallest building" downtown once the towers fell.
Pakman noted that even Trump's boast was wrong because 70 Pine Street stood taller.